Who Decides What Development Looks Like? 

by Kariel Stuart, International Forests and Land Fellow

“A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” — Alfred Korzybski 

A farmer in Ghana, a fisher in the Caribbean, and a pastoralist in Kenya may never meet. 

Yet the systems shaping their livelihoods are often influenced by the same institutions. 

Public development banks direct an estimated $2.2 trillion annually and help shape everything from infrastructure and energy systems to agriculture and rural development. Most people could not name one such bank. Yet these banks’ decisions influence what kinds of farming receive support, which agricultural models expand, and what development approaches governments take to advance sustainability.  

For organizations working on food sovereignty and agroecology, that raises an uncomfortable question: If public institutions exist to serve the public good, why does so much development finance continue flowing toward industrial agriculture, when evidence suggests that less industrialized approaches are better for people and the planet? 

Research presented during a recent convening on public development bank finance for agroecology suggests the answer is larger than any single institution. The event, Public Development Bank Finance for Agroecology: A civil society workshop toward movement alignment, brought together leaders working to advance agroecology and food sovereignty through development finance. Together, they shared perspectives on issues critical to transforming food systems and to explored key insights from a recent report, Agroecology & Public Development Banks: Transforming Development Finance for Equity. 

Industrial agriculture is sustained by an interconnected network of subsidies, investors, development institutions, and corporate actors that rewards scale, efficiency, and growth. Within that system, financing often favors monocultures, chemical-intensive production, industrial livestock, export crops, and other large agribusiness operations. Agroecological systems, by contrast, are frequently viewed as difficult to measure, difficult to finance, or too small to scale. 

Yet participants at the workshop spent surprisingly little time debating whether agroecology works. (Perhaps because overwhelming evidence shows that it does.) 

Instead, much of the discussion centered on a different question: What happens when institutions begin embracing an idea without fully embracing the worldview behind it? 

Development institutions that once paid little attention to agroecology are now commissioning research, participating in agroecology discussions, and exploring investment opportunities. For advocates who spent years pushing for recognition, this represents a significant shift. 

But recognition and transformation are not the same thing. 

Language is easy to change. 

Investment portfolios are harder. 

That tension remains visible today. In 2025, civil society organizations raised concerns about the African Development Bank’s agribusiness finance model, arguing that continued support for industrial agricultural systems undermines commitments to sustainability and food system transformation.  

Throughout the discussion, participants returned to the ways development finance defines success.  

Productivity. Efficiency. Output. Growth. 

Those measurements are not meaningless. But they tell only part of the story. 

What these measurements often fail to capture is resilience. Diverse farming systems are generally better able to withstand climate shocks, support biodiversity, strengthen public health, and maintain food production  when economic or environmental conditions change. Yet many of those benefits emerge over time and are difficult to reduce to the kinds of short-term indicators that development finance often prioritizes. 

A financing model can increase production while degrading soil. It can improve yields while deepening dependence on imported inputs. It can generate economic growth while weakening local food systems. 

What appears successful on a spreadsheet may look very different from the perspective of a farming community living with the consequences. 

That distinction helps explain why agroecology has often sat uneasily within conventional development frameworks. 

Agroecology is not simply a collection of farming techniques.  

Agroecology is participation. 

Governance. 

Local knowledge. 

Equity. 

Community control over food systems.  

Ecological resilience. 

Remove those dimensions and something essential is lost. 

Several participants expressed concern that agroecology could become absorbed into broader sustainability agendas while leaving underlying financial structures largely intact. Not because institutions oppose agroecology, but because institutions often translate new ideas into categories they already understand. 

Metrics.  

Indicators. 

Benchmarks. 

Risk assessments. 

The conversation became especially interesting when it shifted away from projects and toward influence. 

Development banks help establish priorities. Governments often adapt proposals around what institutions are willing to fund. Financing decisions shape policy decisions. They shape research agendas. They shape assumptions about what modern agriculture should look like. 

In that sense, development finance operates through more than money. 

It operates through legitimacy. 

The institutions deciding what is investable are often helping decide what is imaginable. 

For many participants, this is precisely why public development banks deserve greater attention from food justice movements. Despite controlling vast resources and influencing agricultural systems around the world, they remain far less visible in public debate than the corporations that often dominate headlines. 

Public finance plays a critical role in shaping food systems. 

We shouldn’t be asking ourselves whether development banks should influence agriculture. 

The question is, whose vision of agriculture will they continue to finance? 

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To learn more, read the report: Agroecology & Public Development Banks: Transforming Development Finance for Equity.