Global Banks Cut Factory Farming Investments By Half in 2024, But Sustainability Funding Lags

While the world’s leading finance institutions significantly divested from industrial animal agriculture last year, factory farming still received five times more funding than sustainable systems.

International banks’ financial support for factory-farmed meat was slashed by 46% in 2024, although investment in sustainable farming systems was far lower still, according to a new analysis.

The World Bank Group, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the US Development Finance Corporation were among the 16 multilateral finance institutions assessed by Stop Financing Factory Farming, a coalition of 25 climate, human rights and animal welfare groups.

Based on data from the Early Warning System, which collects data from project disclosure webpages, the research revealed that these banks’ financing of factory farming and wider industrial animal agriculture fell from $2.27B in 2023 to $1.23B in 2024 (a 46% drop).

Meanwhile, their support for more sustainable livestock farming approaches more than tripled from $77M to $244M last year, but these systems still attracted only a fifth of the aforementioned amount for factory farming.

“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,” said Merel van der Mark, animal welfare and finance head at Sinergia Animal, a member of the coalition.

“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,” he added.

Overall meat and dairy funding is on the decline

Stop Financing Factory Farming covered livestock production (on the farm), processing (slaughterhouses and dairy processing facilities) and primary inputs (animal feed and vaccines) in its analysis.

Factory farming projects were identified as those whose documents explicitly referenced or implied support for concentrated and intensive operations, including commercial-scale farms. These systems are linked to deforestation, biodiversity loss, water pollution, land degradation, and high greenhouse gas emissions – and that’s before you consider the unethical treatment of animals.

Non-industrial, more sustainable systems involved small-scale animal agriculture and relevant sustainable practices – think extensive grazing, backyard poultry, and food crisis response.

Overall, investments in meat and dairy production fell by 31% in 2024, from $3.3B to $2.3B. But while the share of funds for non-industrial projects grew (from 2% to 10%), so did that of factory farming (from 68% to 75%).

EIB was responsible for the largest overall reduction in factory farming investments, with a 64% decrease, reaching $154M in 2024. The Inter-American Development Bank, meanwhile, backed the largest number of sustainable and non-industrial projects, pumping $112M in seven projects.

“Pouring money into factory farming is incompatible with the pledges multilateral development banks made to support nature and biodiversity,” said Carolina Juaneda, environment director at Bank Information Center, another member of the Stop Financing Factory Farming alliance.

“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.”

World Bank Group under the spotlight

On the other end of the spectrum is the World Bank Group, comprising the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. The organisation has long faced backlash for its financial backing of factory farming systems, and was found to be the worst offender last year, too.

The analysis found that the World Bank Group invested $650M into industrial animal agriculture in 2024. While that is a 13% decrease from the previous year, it made up 53% of all investments analysed in the report. This included a $40 loan by the IFC – its private sector arm – to build a soybean crushing plant in Bangladesh for mass-produced animal feed.

It followed the IFC’s provision of $1.6B in funding for industrial farming between 2017 and 2023, which sparked criticism from climate and animal rights campaigners last year, who called for a phaseout of its support for these systems.

The World Bank Group’s investment patterns belie its own recommendations. Its research suggests that agriculture accounts for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, with livestock farming responsible for nearly 60% of that share.

The bank has said investing in low-emission agriculture could generate health, economic, and environmental benefits worth $4.3 trillion, a 16-to-1 return on investment. Last year, it called on governments to redirect agrifood subsidies away from livestock producers and towards low-emission foods, and encouraged greater adoption of alternative proteins like plant-based, cultivated and fermentation-derived foods.

The World Bank has also announced that it would double its annual agriculture spending to $9B by 2030 and put “smallholder farmers and producer organisations at the centre”. The IFC, meanwhile, has committed to making all its new investment operations from today (July 1) aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“The World Bank is failing to live up to its own promises,” said Alessandro Ramazzotti, a researcher at the International Accountability Project.

“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,” he said.