ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, we examined one of the central claims of discourses regarding the knowledge-based bio-economy (KBBE), regarding nature and knowledge as sources of value, and found it wanting. In this chapter we set out an alternative conception of the KBBE as it really exists. In doing so, we will address four issues: the relations among financialisation, neoliberalism and KBBE discourse; that, as a result, KBBE discourse is not just empty words but (partly) constitutive of the reality it claims only to describe; a characterisation of the real KBBE that is being constructed under financialised neoliberalism in the crucial domain of agriculture, in terms of a four-dimensional attempt at its real subsumption by capital; and, finally, against the second central claim of KBBE discourse, the vacuity, if not straightforward falsehood, of its claims of ecological sustainability.
