Visions of Agricultural Development and Bioeconomy – an (un)equal pair? A comparison of Values and Structural Similarities to broader Environmental Discourses

This paper analyses interconnections between discourses which focus on future land use. The discourse on bioeconomy is mainly driven by actors from the Global North. The discourse on agricultural development focuses on economies in the Global South; this paper restricts on the Tanzanian discourse. Although the two discourses address the same policy fields, they have proceeded independently. 

For each of the two discourses, scholars have distinguished three visions: visions of bioeconomy and of agricultural development. In this paper, I ask whether the supporters of these visions share similar values, and whether there exist structural similarities between these visions and broader environmental discourses (sensu Dryzek 1997).

My findings show that the visions supported by political mainstream in the Global North and the Global South share significant similarities in their values and structural similarities with broader environmental discourses. Although the subdominant visions share content similarities, their supporters differ in their values. These visions are composed of a conglomerate of values ranging from a focus on sustainability to societal and economic transformations. Thus, the possibility to form coalitions is much lower for their supporters than for those of the dominant visions. This is worrisome considering the political effectiveness of the subordinate visions.