Critically but briefly evaluate World Bank's "agriculture for development" program.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In its World Development Report(2007), the World Bank advocates the re-orientation of agricultural infrastructure for “sustainable intensification,” advocating “market smart” subsidies “to stimulate input markets” to capture “the benefits of GMOs for the poor,” where “the private sector drives the organization of value chains that bring the market to smallholders and commercial farms. While this may seem innovative, it is suspect because it is driven by market subsidies, private interests and commercialization of agriculture and local farming. It is in this sense that Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement cautions that, “Africa needn’t intensify its farming sector so that it takes on the character of the industrial-style agriculture that dominates the West. . As we are learning, industrial farming may be efficient, but it has enormous downsides for the environment.” In fact, this kind of sustainability is a myth because genetically modified crops do not feed the world, rather they overwhelmingly feed livestock.