Opening or foreclosing futures? A longitudinal analysis of European bioeconomy foresight (SCAR, 2007–2020)

Foresight exercises are often presented as tools for opening the imagination. This article asks how institutional foresight simultaneously broadens the discursive horizon and narrows down the futures it claims to explore. Analysing the complete series of Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR) foresight reports (2007–2020), the study develops a capture–flight lens, adapted from Deleuzo–Guattarian process philosophy, to trace closure, openings, and silences across thirteen years of European bioeconomy foresight. The analysis traces how the apparatus of capture structures the field of possibility through problem framings, actor configurations, and evaluative metrics. Lines of flight—including the sufficiency narrative, agroecology, and short food chains—emerge within the reports but are recurrently recaptured through semantic translation, institutional absorption, and scalar reframing. Silences, including food sovereignty and commons-based governance, mark the boundaries of the thinkable; degrowth occupies a boundary position, its diagnostic language absorbed while its political programme remained foreclosed. The longitudinal design traces an adaptive apparatus: successive exercises incorporated new sustainability discourses while preserving a growth-oriented trajectory. The article contributes an analytical framework for critical futures research with implications for reflexive foresight design.