The World Bank on ‘agriculture for development’: a failure of imagination or the power of ideology?

The paper provides a critique of the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report on the role of agriculture in the development process, specifically its conception of capitalist farming as a pathway out of rural poverty. It is argued that the Report is unable to overcome a fundamental deficit in development thinking based on modernisation theory and an ideological predisposition towards (and belief in) the agency and working of the market. The paper also argues that the failure of the Report to propose radical land redistributive measures for tackling rural poverty derives from its failure to grasp the fundamental cause and dynamics of rural poverty.