An extractive bioeconomy? Phosphate mining, fertilizer commodity chains, and alternative technologies

Abstract Various bioeconomy strategies seek to replace fossil resources with renewable agrarian resources without departing from the agro-industrial model. Paradoxically, industrial agriculture is an extractive system itself, dependent on the constant supply of mineral resources to replace the nutrients extracted from the soil. This article analyses the evolution of nutrient flows in this system from a historical-theoretical perspective and focuses specifically on the nutrient phosphorus, derived from the raw material phosphate rock. Classified as a “low-cost bulk commodity” for decades, since 2007 phosphate rock has become a strategic resource in the context of the crisis of cheap nutrient supply (2007–2013), a period of unusually high fertilizer prices. By analyzing state and private actor strategies in Germany and Brazil to adapt to this new situation, it becomes clear that the control over flows of phosphorous is increasingly contested. This article argues that bioeconomy strategies are aggravating existing conflicts over phosphate supply, as well as global inequalities, which inter alia become evident in food crises. Technological innovations, which are promoted within bioeconomy strategies, only reduce the extractive character of industrial agriculture in a limited way, while they are securing the interests of dominant actors.