At a flagship event during this year’s World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings in Washington DC, WBG president Ajay Banga announced the Bank would make a “strategic pivot” to double its agri-finance and agribusiness commitments to $9 billion annually by 2030. However, an October report, titled Seed Systems and Gender Equality, by UK-based civil society organisation CAFOD, found the WBG’s interventions in agricultural systems can have negative impacts on vulnerable groups, including women.

Banga framed the commitment as “fundamentally a jobs initiative”, and noted global food insecurity is predicted to increase by 60 per cent in the coming decades. A blend of public and private finance was central to his proposed solution for scaling up agricultural production. This approach will no doubt raise concerns amongst Bank watchers about the power imbalance between international agri-businesses and smallholder farmers, many of whom have criticised the Bank’s ramping up of private finance solutions as part of the Bank’s Evolution Roadmap (see Observer Spring 2024).

Scaling up Bank’s current approach is a risk to gender equality

CAFOD’s new report detailing the negative impacts of the World Bank’s interventions in seed systems on gender equality – with women making up 43 per cent of the agricultural labour force – offers a critical opening for civil society to track and expose the social impacts of the Bank’s approach to agribusiness. CAFOD analysed a selection of World Bank agriculture programmes in 2024 to assess their approach to gender, finding that they focus “almost exclusively on promoting the commercial seed market and encouraging farmers to buy hybrid seeds and fertilisers. Yet they ignored the role of farmer-managed seed systems in enabling small-scale farmers to tackle poverty and enhance food security.” Changes in law that favour commercial seed markets over existing localised seed systems have affected the availability of traditional seed varieties and the quality of seeds women can access. This, in turn, has affected women’s incomes and their food security, and disrupted biodiversity conservation. The report highlights the case of Kenya, where laws prohibiting the sale or even the exchange of seeds lead to penalties and possible jail terms, making women farmers (who are 80 per cent of the agricultural workforce in Kenya) afraid to practice seed saving. These findings echo similar impacts on farmers’ rights in Zambia due to recent Bank-backed reforms (see Observer Summer 2024).

Banga’s call for a 'constellation of solutions' is refreshing. But his focus on agribusiness puts profit, not smallholders, at the centre of that constellation. Our report shows that failing to prioritise smallholders will undermine gender equality and food securityRuth Segal, CAFOD

Ruth Segal, co-author of the CAFOD report commented, “Banga’s call for a ‘constellation of solutions’ is refreshing. But his focus on agribusiness puts profit, not smallholders, at the centre of that constellation. Our report shows that failing to prioritise smallholders will undermine gender equality and food security.”

The report also highlights the Bank’s imposition of ‘for profit’ systems in countries where seeds are not necessarily owned but shared amongst communities. CAFOD found the Bank promoted changes to seed certification laws, making it illegal for communities to “propagate, grow, exchange and sell their own seeds.” This lack of contextual consideration highlights the serious risk of the enormous ‘scaling up’ announced by Banga at the Annual Meetings and brings into question the value of the Bank’s new 2024-30 Gender Strategy (see Observer Autumn 2024). CAFOD found that the metrics used to assess the gender impact of programmes only count the number of women reached, without considering any social, economic and cultural factors affecting women’s role in agriculture. Despite the new Gender Strategy, important Bank programming remains gender blind, as food security is a gendered issue given the prevalence of patriarchal control of land in many Bank borrower countries (see Briefing, Assessing the Bretton Woods Institutions Legacy).