Technology, Environment and the Productivity Problem in African Agriculture: Comment on the World Development Report 2008

This paper is concerned with the need for a 'productivity revolution in smallholder farming' that the World Development Report 2008 (WDR08) identifies is required in sub-Saharan Africa. It reviews the technological options for such a productivity revolution in Africa, and how these are conditioned by the 'agriculture-based' model the WDR08 uses to characterize African economies. It argues that the model effects, firstly, a disconnection of agriculture from 'urban' Africa that constitutes its principal market and the source of investment and inputs with which to raise productivity, and, secondly, an adherence to unrealistic and sometimes contradictory assumptions about the way markets link agriculture to other parts of the economy.     

Banking on Agriculture: A Review of the World Development Report 2008

The World Bank's World Development Report 2008 repackages the development trope that assumes small-scale agriculture to be poor and inefficient and/or redundant in a world of supply shortages despite food abundance. The 'new agriculture for development' replaces smallholder knowledge with corporate inputs to channel food through 'value chains' to markets comprised of those with purchasing power. This essay questions the Bank's new vision, arguing that 'new wine in old bottles' will continue to supply affluence rather than 'feed the world' and sustain its agricultures, especially at a time when land is being commandeered for luxury foods (e.g. the livestock complex, all-season vegetables and fruits) and biofuels, neither of which feed the poor. Ironically, the reproduction of poverty remains the Bank's main source of legitimacy.