Bloomberg article on food problem in Honduras

The developments indicated in the 1989 Congressional Budget Report on Agriculture (mentioned here)do not seem to have gone as indicated there. SeeBloomberg article:
"The country was $3.6 billion in debt in 1990. In return for loans from the World Bank, Honduras became one of dozens of developing nations that abandoned policies designed to protect farmers and citizens from volatile food prices. The U.S. House Financial Services Committee in Washington today explored the causes of the global food crisis and possible solutions.

The committee examined whether policies advocated by the bank and the International Monetary Fund contributed to the situation. Governments from Ghana to the Philippines were pressured to cut protective tariffs and farm supports and to grow more high-value crops for export, reports by the Washington-based World Bank show."
Wikipedia onStructural adjustment and an article from 'European Network on Debt and Development' Untying the knots - How the World Bank is failing to deliver real change on conditionality:
"In 2005 the World Bank launched a review of its conditionality policy. This was in response to growing international criticism, from developed and developing countries alike, that the World Bank was still attaching too many intrusive and, at times, harmful economic policy conditions to its development finance to poor countries.

Two years on from this important step, the World Bank is keen to represent the problem of conditionality as one that has been dealt with, and that is no longer a major problem in lending. In order to independently assess whether or not this is the case, this report, by the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), assesses the effectiveness of the World Bank’s Good Practice Principles (GPPs) in reforming World Bank conditionality.

The report finds that the GPPs (Good Practice Principles) have, as hoped, had a positive impact in reducing the overall number of conditions that the World Bank attaches to its development finance in poor countries. However, unfortunately there has been very limited progress in curbing the Bank’s practice of attaching sensitive economic policy conditions like privatisation and liberalisation conditions to its lending.


The Bank may be slimming down the number of conditions it uses in developing countries, but it is still making heavy use of economic policy conditionality, especially in sensitive areas such as privatisation and liberalisation.

In short, this report highlights serious concerns with the Bank’s implementation of the Good Practice Principles.

Eurodad, along with NGOs across Europe, believe that the World Bank should end its use of economic policy conditionality, which too often promotes sensitive and externally induced policy choices. Instead, grants and loans should be accompanied by a set of responsible financing standard swhich are mutually agreed by the Bank and recipient countries."
Dani Rodrik's response to Bloomberg article in Does the food price crisis enhance the case for self-sufficiency?

"It seems to me odd to fault the World Bank for advice some 15 years ago to eliminate import protection--so that domestic prices could come down at the time--while at the same time complaining about high prices now, even with the benefit of hindsight. If developing countries had all kept their import protection, the global supply of food would have been lower today, not higher. (That is because import protection would have led global production to be reallocated from efficient exporters to inefficient importers.) If you are for self-sufficiency, you must be willing to live with high prices."
There is also a cryptic remark "Unless that is you believe in a combination of dynamic learning effects with externalities, in which case temporarily high prices may be worth it because they result in low prices eventually. But it would be hard to make this case for food crops.

So the answer to the question in the title seems to me to be "no"."

In the comments section,Robert Feinman points to the article "Manufacturing a Food Crisis" by Walden Bello. My own feeling is that 'globalization' is overall a power engine for development if the states can use it with some protective measures and as the US 1989 Budget Report on Agriculture said "In general, depending on their specific resource endowment, agriculture-based economies should supply most of their own staple food needs."