ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the dominant role of agricultural multinational Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in shaping agrofuels discourses in the US over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, first as a producer, and then as a key financial trader in agricultural commodities, and the financialization of agrofuels feedstocks as fungible commodities. A neo-Gramscian perspective towards the political ecology of agrofuels offers a critical analytical framework that encompasses a broader range of actors and structures than more realist-based political science and international relations approaches. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo of 1973, which caused the international price of oil to quadruple over six months, the hitherto niche product of bio-ethanol was placed at the fore-front of US energy politics. ADM claims that this financialization also played a major role in the so-called 'food vs fuel crisis', and concludes by questioning whether agrofuels ever-increasing physical, political and financial likeness to fungible commodities has made their sustainability ungovernable.
