International Finance Institutions Significantly Cut Industrial Animal Agriculture Investments Last Year, New Data Shows
Stop Financing Factory Farming
30th June '25
For immediate release:
June 30, 2025
Contact:
[email protected] / +44 7533 011983.
- Civil society groups welcome support for sustainable agriculture projects from banks like EIB, IADB and MIGA
- However, harmful industrial spending still outstrips sustainable investments by 5:1
- World Bank Group – including its private sector arm IFC – is the worst offender and is “failing to live up to its own promises”
International Finance Institutions’ (IFIs) investments in factory farming and wider industrial animal agriculture supply chains fell by 46% last year, from US$2.27 billion in 2023 to US$1.23 billion in 2024, according to new analysis from the Stop Financing Factory Farming (S3F) coalition, using data from the Early Warning System. Over the same period, investments in more sustainable approaches to animal agriculture more than tripled from US$77m to US$244m. The study analysed the animal agriculture investments of 16 leading IFIs, covering animal production (on-the-farm), processing (slaughterhouses and dairy processing facilities), and primary inputs (animal feed and vaccines).
Merel van der Mark, Head of Animal Welfare and Finance at Sinergia Animal, said: “Factory farming is destroying the planet and harming lives. It is a leading driver of methane and other greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, biodiversity loss, animal cruelty and water pollution. While international finance institutions appear to be shifting their investments, industrial animal agriculture still outstrips spending on more environmentally-friendly animal farming by five to one, so it’s vital that support for sustainable practices continues to gather pace.”
The European Investment Bank saw the biggest overall decrease in its industrial animal agriculture investments of the IFIs studied, falling by 64% from US$427m in 2023 to US$154m in 2024. The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) supported the highest number of sustainable and non-industrial projects, investing US$112.2m in 7 projects from 2023-24.
Carolina Juaneda, Environment Director at Bank Information Center, said: “Pouring money into factory farming is incompatible with the pledges Multilateral Development Banks made to support nature and biodiversity. It’s great to see more banks beginning to invest in more sustainable projects instead – such as support from the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency and the Inter-American Development Bank to smallholder farmers using climate-friendly techniques.”
In October 2024, the World Bank announced that it would double its agriculture spending to $9bn a year by 2030, putting “smallholder farmers and producer organizations at the center.” However, S3F’s analysis finds that the World Bank Group invested US$650m in factory farming and other forms of industrial animal agriculture in 2024. While this is a 13.3% reduction on its 2023 investments, it accounts for 52.8% of all IFI industrial animal agriculture investments in 2024. In December 2024, the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, approved a US$40 million loan to build a soybean crushing plant in Bangladesh, used to mass-produce animal feed. The soybeans will require an estimated 354,000 hectares of land annually to be grown, and will be sourced from Brazil and Argentina where soy production is associated with destruction of sensitive ecosystems.
Alessandro Ramazzotti, Researcher at International Accountability Project, said: “The World Bank is failing to live up to its own promises. By supporting factory farming and other industrial approaches, it is reinforcing a broken system that makes climate change worse and will only exacerbate food insecurity. Instead, it should focus investments only on projects which help transform the food system to make it more sustainable, in line with agroecological principles.”
Learn more about the Stop Financing Factory Farming campaign at https://stopfinancingfactoryfarming.com/.
This release was also covered by Carbon Pulse.
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About Stop Financing Factory Farming (S3F): The Stop Financing Factory Campaign works in partnership with locally affected communities and organizations to shift development finance away from industrial livestock production. Campaign Steering Committee members include: the Bank Information Center, Friends of the Earth U.S., the Global Forest Coalition, International Accountability Project (Early Warning System), Sinergia Animal, and World Animal Protection.
