Development banks worldwide, including the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation and the European Investment Bank, directed about $13 billion to industrial animal farms between 2020 and 2024, compared with roughly $9 billion given to smaller, more diversified Farmed Animal operations, according to a new policy brief. A further $7 billion of animal agriculture funding could not be categorised due to limited information.
The brief was produced by the International Accountability Project and the Critical Research on Industrial Livestock Systems Network, drawing on data from the Factory Farming Finance Tracker, a Stop Financing Factory Farming initiative, and examining 16 development institutions.
Mehroosh Tak, one of the report’s co-authors and associate professor in economics at London’s SOAS University, said, “We’ve known there’s a trend” toward development banks funding industrial Farmed Animal operations, adding that this is the first time researchers have quantified it.
Alessandro Ramazzotti, another co-author and researcher at the International Accountability Project, pointed to the case of CMI Alimentos, a Guatemalan food corporation that has received $725 million since 2018 through IDB Invest, an arm of the Inter-American Development Bank Group, while expanding its US fast food chain, Pollo Campero, past 100 locations, with a further target of 250 within five years. Ramazzotti said, “I would say those funds from development banks are probably ringfenced … the company frees up capital that it can reinvest in its US operations.” He noted that food insecurity across Guatemala and the wider Central America region remains between 15 and 35% of the population despite the funding.
Ramazzotti also referred to an Indigenous Guatemalan Xinka community of about 65 families living near a CMI Alimentos intensive chicken farm who have accused the company of bringing pollution and disease. He said, “Just one day they were told, yeah, there will be a big farm right next to your house. And they couldn’t say no.”
