World Bank and Agrarian Reform is intrinsically associated with each another. This is because different countries across the world are highly dependent on the World Bank for financial assistance, in order to promote their agrarian reform programs.
World Bank and Agrarian Reform in Brazil:
The Latin American nation of Brazil is one among the several countries, who require financial support from the World Bank to promote overall development in their agricultural sector. Though Brazil is considered to be a comparatively rich Latin American nation, in terms of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the world' s 8th largest, the country is poverty-stricken . In an attempt to analyze the underlying causes of Brazilian poverty, the famous economist Maria Conceição Tavares points out that the over-concentration of land in the country is responsible for the persistence of poverty. Moreover, owing to lack of knowledge and education among the common Brazilian masses, they are dominated, repeatedly exploited and deprived by the aristocratic Brazilian landlords. Though the problem is a perpetual one, yet it acquired immense and grave dimensions in the rural areas.
The solution to all the above-mentioned problems in Brazil came a little later than many other countries, with the intervention of World Bank into the impoverished Brazilian agrarian scenario. In fact, the Constitution of Brazil has already directed the national government to reallocate the arable lands. Yet, the delay in the implementation of the directives of the Constitution was because the aristocratic landlords were against such reallocations.
However, the situation showed sufficient changes when the Brazilian government took initiatives for the implementation of the constitutional directives regarding land redistribution, with financial support from the World Bank. The government supported the "Banco da Terra" (or land bank) pattern, with an aim to terminate the concentration of land as soon as possible, in a peaceful manner. In fact, the "Banco da Terra" system proved to be a workable one, which forced the big landlords to sell their landholdings to the government, who in turn sold them to the landless agrarian population on credit.
The "Banco da Terra" system initiated by the World Bank is based on the neo-liberal philosophy. It is this system which terminated the complications arising out of the concentration of lands. It also subsided the social problems emerging out of the interferences of the market powers. It is these powers which were actually accountable for concentrating lands in the hands of the rich landowners and thrusting the poor, landless peasant population towards further impoverishments.
Prior to the implementation of the "Banco da Terra" by the World Bank in Brazil, the peasant class was in a miserable condition. About 4.5 million agrarian families were landless, while 130 million hectares of potentially cultivable land remained uncultivated, concentrated in the form of huge farmsteads under the elite land owners. As per the Brazilian Constitution, these lands could easily be sold, provided that the owners of the land were offered sufficient indemnities in the form of treasury bonds, valid for 15 years. It was only then that the financial assistances of the World Bank would prove effective in handling the conditions of the poor agrarian peasant communities. The World Bank funds were utilized in the form of credit extended to the farmers for making agricultural productions and improve it substantially.