IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v27y2010i4p427-444.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

(Bio)fueling farm policy: the biofuels boom and the 2008 farm bill

Author

Listed:
  • Nadine Lehrer

Abstract

In the mid-2000s, rising gas prices, political instability, pollution, and fossil fuel depletion brought renewable domestic energy production onto the policy agenda. Biofuels, or fuels made from plant materials, came to be seen as America’s hope for energy security, environmental conservation, and rural economic revitalization. Yet even as the actual environmental, economic, and energy contributions of a biofuels boom remained debatable, support for biofuels swelled and became a prominent driver of not only US energy policy but of US farm policy as well. This paper asks why biofuels became such a powerful force in farm policy debates, and draws on policy windows theory and discourse analysis to analyze biofuels’ contributions to the passage of the 2008 farm bill. It finds that budgetary and political factors combined with a particular set of patriotic biofuels-oriented discourses to carry energy policy debates into farm policy. It also comments on the implications of biofuels policies for conservation and sustainable land use in 2008 and beyond. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Suggested Citation

  • Nadine Lehrer, 2010. "(Bio)fueling farm policy: the biofuels boom and the 2008 farm bill," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 27(4), pages 427-444, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:27:y:2010:i:4:p:427-444
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-009-9247-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10460-009-9247-0
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-009-9247-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Coyle, William T., 2007. "The Future of Biofuels: A Global Perspective," Amber Waves:The Economics of Food, Farming, Natural Resources, and Rural America, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, pages 1-6, November.
    2. Orden, David & Paarlberg, Robert & Roe, Terry, 1999. "Policy Reform in American Agriculture," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226632643, April.
    3. Leibtag, Ephraim S., 2008. "Corn Records Near Record High, But What About Food Costs?," Amber Waves:The Economics of Food, Farming, Natural Resources, and Rural America, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, pages 1-6, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kirkels, Arjan F., 2012. "Discursive shifts in energy from biomass: A 30year European overview," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 4105-4115.
    2. Carmen Bain & Theresa Selfa, 2013. "Framing and reframing the environmental risks and economic benefits of ethanol production in Iowa," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 30(3), pages 351-364, September.
    3. Robert Chiles, 2013. "If they come, we will build it: in vitro meat and the discursive struggle over future agrofood expectations," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 30(4), pages 511-523, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Akinfenwa, Samson O. & Qasmi, Bashir A., 2014. "Ethanol, the Agricultural Economy, and Rural Incomes in the United States: A Bivariate Econometric Approach," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 43(2), pages 1-15, August.
    2. Akinfenwa, Samson O. & Qasmi, Bashir A., 2014. "Ethanol, the Agricultural Economy, and Rural Incomes in the United States: A Bivariate Econometric Approach," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 0, pages 1-15.
    3. Johan Swinnen & Alessandro Olper & Senne Vandevelde, 2021. "From unfair prices to unfair trading practices: Political economy, value chains and 21st century agri‐food policy," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 52(5), pages 771-788, September.
    4. Tangermann, Stefan, 2001. "Has The Uruguay Round Agreement On Agriculture Worked Well?," Working Papers 14586, International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium.
    5. Cheteni, Priviledge, 2017. "Sustainability development: Biofuels in agriculture," MPRA Paper 80969, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 24 Jun 2017.
    6. Swinnen, Johan F.M., 2010. "The Political Economy of the Most Radical Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 59(Supplemen), pages 1-12, December.
    7. Glauber, Joseph W. & Effland, Anne, 2016. "United States agricultural policy: Its evolution and impact," IFPRI discussion papers 1543, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    8. Blandford, David & Orden, David, 2008. "United States: Shadow WTO Agricultural Domestic Support Notifications," IFPRI discussion papers 821, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    9. Vaillancourt, Kathleen & Bahn, Olivier & Levasseur, Annie, 2019. "The role of bioenergy in low-carbon energy transition scenarios: A case study for Quebec (Canada)," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 24-34.
    10. Matthews, A., 2007. "Good Governance in the Agri-Food Sector of Industrialised Countries," Proceedings “Schriften der Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften des Landbaues e.V.”, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA), vol. 42, March.
    11. Zulauf, Carl R. & Orden, David, 2009. "ACRE in the U.S. Farm Bill and the WTO," Working Papers 51821, International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium.
    12. Alvaro Calzadilla & Katrin Rehdanz & Richard Betts & Pete Falloon & Andy Wiltshire & Richard Tol, 2013. "Climate change impacts on global agriculture," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 120(1), pages 357-374, September.
    13. Zulauf, Carl & Orden, David, 2014. "The US Agricultural Act of 2014: Overview and analysis," IFPRI discussion papers 1393, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    14. Pease, James W. & Lehman, John & Orden, David, 2001. "Proposed End Of Peanut Quota Program: Economic Effects On Virginia Producers," Report Papers 14845, Virginia Tech, Rural Economic Analysis Program (REAP).
    15. Nadine Lehrer & Dennis Becker, 2010. "Shifting paths to conservation: policy change discourses and the 2008 US farm bill," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(5), pages 639-655.
    16. Zhang, Wei & Yu, Elaine A. & Rozelle, Scott & Yang, Jun & Msangi, Siwa, 2013. "The impact of biofuel growth on agriculture: Why is the range of estimates so wide?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 227-239.
    17. Zulauf, Carl & Orden, David, 2012. "US Farm Policy and Risk Assistance: The Competing Senate and House Agriculture Committee Bills of July 2012," National Policies, Trade and Sustainable Development 320174, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD).
    18. Zanxin Wang & Wei Wei & Margaret Calderon & Xianchun Liao, 2019. "Impacts of biofuel policy on the regional economy and carbon emission reduction in Yunnan, China," Energy & Environment, , vol. 30(5), pages 930-948, August.
    19. Miller, J. Corey & Coble, Keith H., 2007. "Cheap food policy: Fact or rhetoric?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 98-111, February.
    20. Levasseur, Annie & Bahn, Olivier & Beloin-Saint-Pierre, Didier & Marinova, Mariya & Vaillancourt, Kathleen, 2017. "Assessing butanol from integrated forest biorefinery: A combined techno-economic and life cycle approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 440-452.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:27:y:2010:i:4:p:427-444. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.