The World Bank, Agricultural Credit, and the Rise of Neoliberalism in Global Development

This article examines the development of World Bank’s agricultural credit programming between 1960 and 1990. I show how these projects constituted key sites where neoliberal governance was initially articulated, negotiated, contested. Agricultural a point emphasis for Bank during its ‘Assault on Poverty’ era in 1970s. this reflected strong through marketisation commercialisation, yet also very clearly demonstrated clear points ambivalence around role relation to markets. increasingly included implicit or explicit conditionalities linked interest rates, commercialisation state-owned lenders, wider financial sectors into 1980s. But efforts marketize commercialise often mundane operational challenges as much ideological shifts, themselves largely failed even their own terms. Looking at evolution thus shows broadly positions were arrived part trial error adjustments concerns, well fraught promotion market-based systems practice structural adjustment era.