by Rachel A. Nalepa, Boston University

With the growth of the biofuel complex, the concept of “marginal land” has emerged as a term commonly associated with the promotion of agrofuels. Remote sensing and other data are used to globally characterize land as marginal based on predominantly biophysical features that render them “non-competitive” for the purpose of commercial agriculture. “Marginality” is a relative and non-static term, however, dictated by the economics of localities—the scale on which land use decisions are actually made. This paper: (i) questions the very notion of “marginal land” as a relevant and prescriptive concept given its inability to be uniformly operationalized across scales and (ii) advances the notion that “marginal land” is an artificial spatial construct that serves to re-frame land in a way that neglects socio-ecological processes in order to re-frame it in support of principles based in resource productivism.