BIOFUELS AND THE FINANCIALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL FOOD SYSTEM - Food Systems Failure - page 87

practices and networks. Liberal NGOs suh as Oxfam also consider investing in ag-
riculture as likely to have 'an enormous poverty reduction “pay of', because of ag-
riculture's importance to food security …'. hus the Oxfam International Researh
Report: Harnessing Agriculture for Development claims 'Agriculture is certainly an
important part of the mix of activities that sustain household economies, but has to
be viewed in the context of increased multi-activity by poor households, deepening
urban-rural linkages and heightened national and international out-migration'. Ac-
knowledging that 'certain features of small farms - their transmission of local know-
ledge for instance - can also mean they have a key role to play in protecting envir-
onmental goods', the executive summary continues 'it may be necessary to recog-
nize that, in some cases, investment in agriculture will be about enabling rural pop-
ulations to exercise greater hoice about their livelihoods, including leaving farming
altogether' (quoted in Fraser, 2009). Ultimately, then, peasant agriculture is regarded
as development's 'poverty baseline' for development, 26 and largely accepted as suh
in the official development paradigm.
Given that a key register for development is the (apparent) absence of peasantries
in the global North, 27 policy-makers, funders and commentators organize their data
along these lines, making the assumption that there is a singular (standard) traject-
ory in play, governed by scale efficiencies, market-rational resource allocation, and
so forth. Peasant migration of the land is thus a function of either economic un-
derahievement or simply hoice. 28 Ultimately, the point is that the standard metric
in play privileges a 'false economy', so to speak, constructed entirely of monetary
measures informing the national accounting apparatus through whih states conduct
their business. One aspect of this concerns World Bank monitoring and evaluation,
where, for example:
FIAS indicators for project-specific “impact” include FDI/GDP statistics, gross
fixed capital formation, export performance and/or private investments in spe-
cific industries, and the number of new business registrations. Nowhere within
its M&E [monitoring and evaluation] does FIAS consider, for example, the num-
ber of local jobs created, hanges to hunger and poverty statistics, the average
incomes of local population, or whether [there is compliance] with IFC's own
Performance Standards.
Daniel (2010, p27)
Beyond recording its accomplishments one-sidedly (whih reinforces perceptions
of 'development', whih in turn supports global business-as-usual), the other aspect