The World Bank is celebrating its 60th anniversary. Meanwhile, social movements worldwide are organizing demonstrations against the impact of the policies and ideology of this institution. The World Bank influences the development strategies and the economic policies of Southern countries by making them compromise their budgets with projects that benefit large corporations. Under the pretense of "economic assistance", World Bank programs have a great impact on the external debt. In addition, many World Bank projects require financial contributions from the state budget. The United States government is by far the most influential force in establishing the priorities of the World Bank. It can veto any significant shifts in policy and by custom appoints its president, who is usually a product of the financial sector. Following the ideology called the "Washington Consensus", the World Bank promotes structural adjustment policies. These policies have been implemented in rural areas and forests, where the World Bank concentrates the majority of its projects by promoting privatization of land through market-based rules. According to this idea, the peasants should become more "efficient" by integrating their production in the agribusiness sector. In the last decades, the idea that the rural territory is not a significant site of economic development has increased in many parts of the world. The processes of rural exodus are based on the image of the urban centers as the main producers of income and economic opportunities. It is not at random that the main World Bank projects are targeting the countryside. The most valuable natural resources, such as water, minerals and biodiversity, are concentrated in these areas. In Brazil, the Bank's ideology started to have a greater impact during the administration of president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994-2002), who established an agrarian policy called "New Rural World". This model was centered on three basic principles: (1) the settlement of landless families was considered a marginal social policy; (2) the federal government decided to transfer its responsibility to implement agrarian reform to states and counties; and (3) constitutional agrarian reform was replaced by World Bank projects that promoted a "land market". During the Cardoso government, the World Bank started three programs that followed the "land market" model: "Cédula da Terra" (Land Bill), Land Bank, and Land Trust to Fight Poverty. These programs benefit the unproductive large landowners by paying in cash for the land, and by acquiring idle land, which is mostly of bad quality and overpriced. The associations created to receive credit from the Bank were often organized by these large estate owners themselves, and much of the acquired land could have been subject to expropriation under existing Brazilian laws. In Brazil, the Constitution determines that idle land can be expropriated by the government, and the financial compensation is done with "agrarian bonds", paid within a period of 20 years. On the other hand, the conditions of these projects make it impossible for rural workers to pay the loans. These small farmers have no support to produce, even for the subsistence of their families. After president Lula took office in January 2003, the rural grassroots organizations were hopeful they could reverse this process. The expectation was that agrarian reform would be in the center of the political agenda, as an important way to create jobs, to guarantee food sovereignty, and to serve as a base for a new development model. On the contrary, what we saw was a continuation of the World Bank policies in the countryside. In November of 2003, the Ministry of Agrarian Development announced the "National Agrarian Reform Plan: Peace, Production and Quality of Life in the Countryside". One of the main goals of the plan, with the intention to reach 130,000 families, is the continuation of a World Bank program called "Land Credit to Fight Rural Poverty," following "land market" rules. This project weakens the role of the state to implement agrarian policies because it requires resources from the public budget to benefit the rural oligarchy. Another goal of the plan that tries to facilitate the implementation of the "land market" is the registry and mapping of 2.2 million rural properties. The main objective of this program is to destroy the concept of public and community land. In many parts of the world, this policy has contributed to increased land concentration and environmental destruction. The sale of land titles benefits large landowners and "grileiros" (people who appropriate and register land illegally). In addition, the project makes it easier for local politicians to give out land to the lumber industry and large agribusinesses. For example, in the Amazon region and in the "cerrado" (savanna), the privatization of public land facilitates the expansion of single-crop farming of soy. The project also allows the World Bank to have access to strategic data about the Brazilian territory, as the main supporter of this mapping process. Despite the fact that the National Agrarian Reform Plan prioritizes World Bank policies, community-based organizations in Brazil still expect that Lula's government will fulfill its commitments to the implementation of an extensive agrarian reform, based on the provisions of the constitution. In order to do that, the government should revoke the bill that prevents the expropriation of occupied land, and establish a maximum limit to the size of properties in Brazil, as was done in most industrial countries. In regard to the proposal of cadastre and mapping the rural territory, it would be easier and less expensive for the government to establish a deadline for all owners of large estates to register their properties and file a productivity report. In this way, the burden of proof would be inverted, and would become the responsibility of the landowners. The Brazilian rural territory has an immense cultural and social diversity, which includes landless people, rural workers, small farmers, indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities, people affected by dams, rubber-tappers, and many others. In this context, it is not acceptable that the responsibility for formulating rural policies, including the use and occupation of the territory, would be delegated to an international financial institution like the World Bank. The government needs to implement public policies that are compatible with the complexities, the history, and the experiences of grassroots movements that struggle for the democratization of land and for food sovereignty. * Marcelo Resende is a geographer, former president of Incra (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform), and a member of the Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (Social Network for Justice and Human Rights). * Maria Luisa Mendonça is a journalist and member of Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (Social Network for Justice and Human Rights). * Translated by Licia Shintzato-Fischer