World Bank President Ajay Banga has said Uttar Pradesh has achieved an ecosystem of resilient agriculture with foundations, co-operatives, and digital connection and the agency would replicate it for agricultural growth in other geographies. Banga said agriculture is core to development globally but the challenge is to make it a driver of jobs, income, and food security at scale.

 “The foundation that needs to exist is clear: policy and infrastructure fixes where they matter—land-tenure clarity, seed and sanitary standards, and basics like irrigation, rural roads, storage, and power for cold chain,” Banga said during World Bank Agri Connect event during 2025 Annual Meetings.

“Focus on the small farmer who lacks inputs, credit, advice, or a dependable buyer. Producer organizations, often built by governments, entrepreneurs, or private actors, can connect them to suppliers, insurers, buyers, and lenders. That gets advice, fertilizer, and working capital to the field and creates predictable routes to market. Once productivity and scale improve, cooperatives sell into structured offtake with SMEs or larger firms. Farmers capture more value, lenders see predictable cash flows, and incomes rise,” he added.

“Resilience is embedded at the beginning, not added later: heat-tolerant seeds, soil-matched fertilizers and rejuvenation techniques, efficient irrigation, and strong insurance and financing underpinnings so a bad season doesn’t become a bad year,” Banga said.

“And digital is the glue that holds the system together. Like small AI tools on basic phones that can diagnose crop disease from a photograph, inform fertilizer choices, prompt action ahead of weather events, and move payments securely. The data trail becomes a credit history; better underwriting lowers the cost of capital; lower costs draw in more lenders. That is the virtuous loop we are building,” Banga said.

“This isn’t theory. In India’s Uttar Pradesh, I saw all this come together together—the foundation, co-ops, resilience, and digital—and it delivered. Proof of concept: it works, and it scales. That is the ecosystem we intend to replicate wherever possible. But it only succeeds if government, business, and development partners row in the same direction,” he said.

Banga said the World Bank has set a target to double our agribusiness commitments to $9 billion annually by 2030. Banga said the global efforts have to channelized towards ensuring agricultural growth into businesses that produce higher incomes for smallholder farmers and more opportunity across entire economies.

“We’ve set a target to double our agribusiness commitments to $9 billion annually by 2030—aiming to mobilize an additional $5 billion. It is grounded in what we’ve tested in the field and in lessons borrowed from others. Steal shamelessly and share seamlessly—that is how we succeed together,” Banga said.

Banga said over the next 10-15 years, about 1.2 billion young people in developing countries will come of age, but current trends suggest only 400 million jobs will be created. “That delta—hundreds of millions—will either power the global economy or spill over into unrest and migration. That is why the World Bank Group has made job creation our central mission,” he said.  

Banga said the the jobs will come majorly from five sectors - infrastructure, agribusiness, healthcare, tourism, and value-added manufacturing.