Depoliticizing the countryside? The World Bank’s role in agriculture and rural development

Following the publication of the WDR 2008 on ‘Agriculture for Development’, the World Bank has re-assumed a leadership role in the global governance of agriculture and rural development. This re-engagement has surprised many observers, since agriculture had become increasingly sidelined within the Bank after the neoliberal turn of the 1980s and in the face of increasingly visible protests against the adverse social and environmental consequences of its policies. In this chapter, I investigate the reasons behind this renewed interest and assess how its current policies diverge from past approaches. I argue that this shift is best explained as the Bank’s response to a growing legitimacy gap that accommodates key criticisms from external contenders while simultaneously adopting a de-politicization strategy that frames issues incongruent with its organizational culture in technical, apolitical terms. I provide evidence of this strategy by analyzing the examples of the Bank’s land reform policy and climate-smart agriculture.