An eco-efficient bioeconomy has been widely promoted to alleviate resource constraints of rising global demand. An integrated, diversified biorefinery would convert diverse non-food biomass into valuable products, thus providing input-substitutes for fossil fuels within current infrastructures. This agenda intensifies various resource burdens and market competition to supply cheap biomass. Biorefinery innovation trajectories have the same drivers as the current production-consumption patterns expanding global demand for food, feed, fuel, etc. More efficient, flexible conversion of biomass will strengthen financial incentives to intensify resource extraction, especially by industrialising agri-forestry systems. Such a techno-fix depends on cheapening resource supplies without paying for their societal and environmental costs.