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.