Rural geography III: Do we really have a choice? The bioeconomy and future rural pathways

Expectations and contradictions in the rural, played out through small-scale farming, the pervasive nature of globalization, discourses of food security, new productivism and escalation in global land grabs have been shown in previous reports to impact greatly on sustainable rural futures. The analysis continues here by exploring another often contradictory pathway, that of sustainable intensification. The bioeconomy and its nascent popularity in rural policy discourse is discussed before questions are posed about the ‘logic’ of sustainable intensification, its increasingly dominant positioning as a guiding principle, and its conceivable use as a rural policy instrument.