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land use
Development Banks’ Factory Farm Investments Harm the Climate and Local Communities
Despite clear evidence of the harms of industrial livestock, new research showed that in 2024, 11 leading international finance institutions invested $1.23 billion in factory farming and wider industrial animal agriculture supply chains.
Jul 06, 2025
The World Bank’s mission is to “create a world free of poverty on a livable planet.” However, the institution, along with its peer development partners, pumps billions of dollars into factory farming, appearing to turn a blind eye to the significant harm it causes.
We cannot meet the 1.5°C Paris agreement goal without reducing emissions from livestock. Animal agriculture is a leading cause of climate breakdown; already responsible for around 16% of global greenhouse gas emissions and set to rise.
Factory farming is also tearing apart our thriving ecosystems. In Latin America, high demand for industrial grazing pasture and land for growing animal feed has fueled devastating deforestation: 84% of all Latin America’s forest loss in the last 50 years can be attributed to land claimed for livestock farming. Factory farming also pollutes soils and freshwater sources that wild animals and rural communities rely on.
Development banks tasked with tackling poverty and climate change owe it to current and future generations to use their investments to help spur the transition toward more sustainable diets and forms of food production.
Yet despite clear evidence of the harms of industrial livestock, new research I conducted for the Stop Financing Factory Farming Coalition (S3F), based on data from the Early Warning System, showed that in 2024, 11 leading international finance institutions (IFI) invested $1.23 billion in factory farming and wider industrial animal agriculture supply chains. This is five times more than what they spend on more sustainable non-industrial animal agriculture projects. The World Bank and its private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), were together responsible for over half the funding for industrial animal agriculture.
One of the investments IFC made last year was a $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. Communities living near the plant have documented the existing and potential impacts such as the contamination of coastal waters and freshwater sources, which would consequently lead to a reduction in the local fish stocks that local communities rely on to guarantee their livelihoods, and brought their concerns in front of representatives of the U.S. government.
Over the last 20 years, IFC has also made a number of investments in Pronaca, the largest food producer in Ecuador, to expand its factory farm operations. The company has built pig and poultry farms in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, a region home to natural forest and Indigenous Peoples. Local Indigenous communities documented how the farms have polluted water resources that are traditionally used to sustain their livelihoods, forcing community members to migrate to preserve their traditional cultures.
Other IFIs have also made harmful investments. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) boldly claims all its investments have been Paris-aligned since January 2023; however, recent spending to expand multinational fast food chains in Eastern Europe seem to show a different scenario. During the first half of 2025, the EBRD has provided $10 million for the expansion of KFC and Taco Bell restaurants in the Western Balkans, and proposed an equity investment of $46 million for the expansion of Burger King and Louisiana Popeyes in Poland, Romania, and Czech Republic.
The latter investment would have led to the opening of 600 restaurants in the region, with large adverse impacts in terms of public health and emissions of greenhouse gases. Restaurant Brands International, which owns Burger King and Popeyes, reported approximately 29 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions along its value chain in 2024, more than the entire emissions of Northern Ireland. Thankfully, following civil society pressure, the investment was not approved by the EBRD’s Board of Directors.
While the overall picture is bleak, there is real room for hope. Between 2023 and 2024, IFI investments in factory farming nearly halved, and investments in more sustainable approaches tripled, from $77 million to US$244 million. Examples of promising investments include the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency and the Inter-American Development Bank providing support to smallholder farmers using climate-friendly techniques.
This is clearly good news; however, it remains too early to tell if these figures are a one-off blip, or part of a longer-term trend. My hope is that the next round of investment data will show that harmful investments have dropped further—if not stopped completely—and more sustainable ones additionally increased.
Development banks tasked with tackling poverty and climate change owe it to current and future generations to use their investments to help spur the transition toward more sustainable diets and forms of food production, rather than replicating and expanding the broken systems that are wrecking our planet. By only investing in animal agriculture projects that are sustainable—following agroecological principles such as promoting species diversity and using nature’s resources efficiently—banks can help move us closer toward “a world free of poverty on a livable planet.”
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Progressive Groups Unveil 'Rural New Deal' to 'Reverse Decades of Economic Decline'
"Addressing the problems and concerns of rural America, isn't just the right thing to do, it is essential for the health of our nation," said the head of Progressive Democrats of America.
Sep 13, 2023
"A Rural New Deal is urgently needed to build and rebuild local economies across rural America, reverse 40 years of wealth and corporate concentration, restore degraded lands, reclaim land and ownership opportunities for those whose land was taken by force or deceit, and ensure that communities and the nation can and do meet the basic needs of its people."
That's the opening line of a report released Tuesday by Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI), which recognizes that "for too long, we've neglected, dismissed and underinvested" in rural U.S. communities, and offers "a broad policy blueprint to help steer progressive priorities" in such regions.
"Addressing the problems and concerns of rural America, isn't just the right thing to do, it is essential for the health of our nation. Progressives have ignored rural for too long," said PDA executive director Alan Minsky in a statement. "The Rural New Deal will change that."
"Rebuilding and renewing supportive social and economic connections across rural and urban lines, empowering rural people and communities, moving away from extractive relationships of the past, is the course we must chart together."
The report provides principles to guide development and implementation of a Rural New Deal (RND), asserting that all policies must be worker-focused as well as "flexible, adaptable, and locally driven to the greatest degree possible," and should "encourage and invest in innovative, effective solutions."
The principles section stresses that "farmers and business people, nonprofit innovators, union and worker advocates, and community and political leaders must be part of the design of specific initiatives for their communities—rather than simply being recipients or implementors of top-down programs."
The section also highlights goals that should be woven into the 10 "pillars" of a Rural New Deal: reversing corporate concentration; focusing on real and durable wealth; addressing generations of racially based discrimination; restoring degraded landscapes to their full productive and ecological potential; and investing in the organizational infrastructure and local leaders that sustain rural programs.
The RND pillars—which each include up to eight recommendations for primarily federal action—are:
- Rebuild farm, forest, and food economies;
- Reward work and ensure livable wages;
- Dismantle monopolies, empower and support local business;
- Invest in community and regional infrastructure;
- Rebuild small town centers;
- Cultivate self-reliance and resilience;
- Invest in rural healthcare;
- Fully fund rural schools;
- Make rural and small town housing affordable; and
- Re-localize rural and small town banks.
Policy proposals include supporting regenerative farm, forest, and fishery businesses; adopting a federal jobs guarantee with a living wage and essential benefits; making broadband access universal; expanding Medicaid and Medicare access; incentivizing installation of solar technology on buildings and non-prime farmland, over parking lots, and in vacant spaces; and enacting reforms to rein in private equity's "unbridled power," such as eliminating the carried interest tax loophole.
"At the heart of a RND is the recognition that rural places are fundamentally different from urban and suburban areas, not only culturally and politically, but physically. They are 'rural' because they are expansive and land-based," the report emphasizes. "This does not mean that all efforts to rebuild rural economies and communities should revolve around farming or other land-based sectors. However, it does mean that land-based (also including rivers, lakes, and oceans) enterprises must still play a central role in rural development, even as internet access, virtual work, and the tech sector grow in importance."
While different, rural and urban communities are "deeply intertwined," with rural businesses often relying on urban markets and capital. Thus, the document adds, "rebuilding and renewing supportive social and economic connections across rural and urban lines, empowering rural people and communities, moving away from extractive relationships of the past, is the course we must chart together."
The RND report comes as a potential government shutdown looms and as far-right members of the U.S. House of Representatives open an impeachment inquiry into Democratic President Joe Biden, despite a lack of any proof of wrongdoing.
The politically divided Congress has passed few pieces of legislation this year, and the nation only narrowly avoided a catastrophic U.S. default because Biden struck a controversial deal with GOP economic hostage-takers to temporarily suspend the U.S. debt ceiling. As Common Dreams reported during that fight in May, Fix Our House released an analysis arguing that "Congress lacks the incentive structure necessary to responsibly handle crucial tasks like raising the debt limit."
While "gerrymandering is a huge problem," polarization is also an issue, as "rural voters are increasingly trending more to the right, and urban voters more to the left," the Fix Our House report says. Members of Congress elected in uncompetitive districts fear primaries, so they focus on their voting base and refrain from working with "the enemy."
RUBI director Anthony Flaccavento said Tuesday that "the extreme political divide in our country robs rural communities of the resources and opportunities they need, while making it nearly impossible to address the biggest problems we face as a nation."
"The Rural New Deal will help break that stalemate," he suggested, "because it is both comprehensive and bottom-up in its approach, focusing on strategies that we know from experience will work."
In a Newsweek op-ed, Flaccavento noted that "some will argue that we can't afford the investments proposed in the Rural New Deal, or that the federal government should not be 'picking winners' by supporting small businesses, clean energy providers, or family farmers. We don't buy it. The United States currently has 756 billionaires with an estimated collective net worth of $4.5 trillion. If we include U.S. millionaires, this tiny slice of our population holds over $190 trillion of wealth."
"The federal government has been picking winners for decades, and most of them are among that group," he declared. "It's long past due for our elected representatives to level the playing field between the rich and the rest of us and to support the long-term resilience that investment in rural people and places will help bring about."
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