Authors: John Zysman, David Zilberman, and Dan Breznitz
The bioeconomy can be understood simultaneously as a successor to the industrial economy, a corrective to its most damaging consequences, and a complement to the digital economy. At present, it remains largely aspirational: a proposed pathway toward sustainability that seeks to reconcile economic growth with environmental limits. A modern bioeconomy must be clearly distinguished from earlier epochs of traditional agriculture. It is characterized instead by the deployment of advanced life sciences,...
Authors: Thomas C. Harmon, M. Anne Visser, and Alexandra E. Hill
Since the mid-nineteenth century, California’s abundant sunshine, fertile soils, and access to inexpensive labor supported the expansion of cultivated land and the production of high-value agricultural crops. In the mid-1900s, with reservoirs and canals afforded by major state and federal projects, the state soon blossomed into one of the most productive agricultural systems in the world. In 2024, California’s agricultural sector generated more than $60 billion in revenue, led by dairy products, almonds and...
California’s inland regions sit at the center of the state’s food, water, logistics, energy, and land-use systems. Yet they lag behind coastal cities in wages, innovation intensity, and access to high-skill jobs. Labor shortages are already occurring in various key sectors including agriculture, construction, forestry, healthcare, and transportation. When considering pathways and possible solutions to inland California’s challenges, experiences of Japan actually provide a model for transforming blue collar work into white collar jobs that has the...
Authors: Ruslana Rachel Palatnik and David Zilberman
Israel, a nation with limited natural water resources and high aridity, has emerged as a global leader in sustainable water management. Through a blend of advanced technologies, institutional reforms, and economic instruments, Israel has not only secured its own water needs but has also built surplus capacity to support regional cooperation. This paper helps identify the factors that determine the successes versus the failures of Israel’s water system transformation, which may also apply to California, a...
Authors: David Wells Roland-Holst and David Zilberman
In all its habitats, from miles below sea level to the summits of mountain ranges, biomass is among the Earth’s most abundant resources. Since the origin of our species, biomass has offered humanity an ever-expanding array of services. Despite a long and beneficial relationship, however, we remain far from realizing the potential of biomass to contribute to human livelihoods and the habitats of all species. On the contrary, much of our biomass resource use continues to threaten the environment...
Denmark has over the past century, developed one of the world’s most coherent, integrated, and strategically governed bioeconomy ecosystems. It is the fruit of the combined evolution of agriculture, industrial biotechnology, environmental regulation, green energy policy, and a deeply rooted collaborative culture linking public institutions, research organizations, private industry and users. The Danish experience offers lessons for how advanced economies can combine competitiveness, sustainability, and innovation in...
California has enjoyed decades of growth without significant economic planning. The state’s role has mainly been to track this growth, find ways to leverage it for general fund revenues, and regulate it where necessary to ensure clean air and water—all of which it has done exceptionally well. But the time has come to move from reaction and management to action and implementation. This will require California officials to affirmatively map a strategy for the bioeconomy that flows from feedstocks through to consumer purchase...
Authors: Bruce Pickering and Daniel Payares-Montoya The chapter argues that California's bioeconomy can bridge the widening economic divide between its prosperous coastal regions and its lagging inland regions by leveraging inland agricultural assets alongside coastal innovation strengths.
Authors: Egon Terplan and Karen Warner (BEAM Circular)
In response to the economic dislocation from COVID-19 and the subsequent federal investment in recovery, one California county – Stanislaus County – chose to make a major investment in growing the local bioeconomy as part of an economic mobility strategy. That seed investment resulted in the creation of a new bioeconomy sector intermediary and the expansion of the work to become a regionwide priority where the intermediary has been working with dozens of companies and researchers since 2023. That funding...
