The Just Transition Dilemma: Who Pays the Price of Moving Beyond Factory Farming?
By Kayla Hartman
We urgently need to transition our global food system to a more environmentally friendly and sustainable model. Industrial animal agriculture - particularly beef production - is a major driver of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas emissions. Increasing droughts and unpredictable rainfall are also making cattle production more financially unstable, exposing farmers and rural communities to growing economic risk. The USDA forecasts that US farm sector debt will continue rising and reach a record high in 2026, increasing financial pressure on producers.
The sad irony is that while this industry is suffering from the effects of a rapidly changing planet, it is itself one of its largest drivers, with approximately 75% of terrestrial farmed animals put through factory farms globally.
Loading image...Changing what is produced is becoming increasingly necessary to both mitigate further damages caused by nature loss and the economic consequences of a vulnerable industry.
An important step in achieving this, by scaling down industrial animal agriculture, is divestment, which is an increasingly loud demand from concerned consumers across the world that don’t want their money to fuel the climate crisis.
But in this scenario, what happens to the workers? What happens to the rural communities that stand to be most affected by the transition to a sustainable food system?
These are the questions that underscore the need for a “just food transition.”
The concept of a just transition has roots in the climate movement. It argues the need to support the workers and communities most impacted by the shift towards low-carbon energy sources. However, the massive impact of industrial animal agriculture on climate change has put a spotlight on the necessity of a parallel just food transition, and global financial actors will be vital to its success.
Climate and biodiversity researchers around the world have made clear that reducing reliance on industrial animal agriculture - particularly high-emitting beef production - will be essential to meeting climate targets. So how can this be done without damaging rural communities whose economies rely on this food system?
How Meat Giants Have a Stranglehold on Rural Communities
While the prospect of a shrinking beef industry seems disastrous for rural communities, it might actually be a welcomed change in disguise. Beyond the strain that the industry puts on local water supplies and the health implications of high pollution, rural communities are fundamentally made more vulnerable by the industrial animal agriculture industry.
Loading image...The meat industry is dominated by a small number of corporations. In the US, just four firms control 85% of the US beef market. That makes for shaky economic foundations, to say the least, and puts rural livelihoods at the behest of huge corporations.
The risks of this industry concentration played out recently in 2023 and 2024, when Tyson Foods - one of the largest meat processing companies in the US - closed down enough of their processing plants to lay off over 5,000 employees.
The largest wave of layoffs by any of the top companies also came from Tyson earlier this year, with over 3,000 people in Lexington, Nebraska losing their jobs at once in a 10,000 person town - that’s 30% of that community’s population jobless in a heartbeat. The fallout left huge economic holes in its wake.
But it’s not rose-tinted when these corporations do stick around. Poor pay, unsafe working conditions, persistent mental health impacts and wage suppression are frequent complaints by the workforces of the largest meat companies.
In a damning report by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, it was found that major meat processing firms depress wages and actually increase inequality for most rural areas.
The impact of doing business in the local area is also pretty limited: farms that earned more than $900,000 per year spent less than 20% of their earnings within the local rural area. By contrast, smaller farms spent almost 95% of their earnings locally. This underscores a huge economic benefit for rural economies in the transition away from industrial animal agriculture.
Loading image...It’s likely that this trend could have become even starker as Big Ag consolidates. Between 1978 to 2017, the number of mid-sized farms halved, while large farms have now taken over the vast majority of cropland. As a result, new farmers and historically marginalised Black farmers face an ever-higher barrier to entry as large corporations drive rural populations away.
The Agricultural Renaissance: Financing a Plant-Based Food System
A just food transition will radically change what it looks like to work in agriculture across the globe: jobs in livestock and meat processing would necessarily fall away, while jobs in growing plant-based foods would skyrocket and new industries in alternative proteins could blossom.
A 2020 report by the International Labour Organization and Inter-American Development Bank estimated how a transition to plant-focused farming would impact jobs in the Latin American and Caribbean region in a low-emissions future. They found that livestock jobs would decline by 4.3 million jobs by 2030, but that this would be massively offset by a whopping 19 million jobs created in the production of fruits and vegetables in rural areas.
This could indicate significant gains for workers in developing countries. This is important because these are some of the populations set to be most impacted by a warming planet.
In other places, however, there is a different story. The Laudes Foundation estimated in 2025 that in the long-term, net-zero scenario of a just food transition, there would be a 14-15% job loss and 7-11% job gain in the EU, UK and US for workers in “red meat, poultry, dairy, grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, and alternative proteins.” This less optimistic outlook emphasises the necessity for finance initiatives to support workers whose jobs may be affected by the food transition.
Loading image...The transition will have varying effects on farm-produced commodities too; some areas will see massive growth, while others shrink. To mitigate negative impacts and make the food transition a positive development for all, red meat, poultry, and feed crop workers in particular would need support to re-deploy elsewhere. Most immediately, this may be to the adjacent sectors set to gain from the transition, such as alternative protein and legume production in which employment is projected to increase rapidly.
Loading image...Fruits and vegetables show high potential for monumental employment growth. Two other commodities are expected to have off-the-charts booms: jobs in legume production are estimated to grow between 150-260% and alternative protein jobs are expected to increase by 175-295%.
Abandoning the Path of High-Emissions: What Does a Just Food Transition Actually Look Like?
It’s clear that the steep drops in red meat, poultry, dairy, and grain production reveal the need for a transitionary framework to ease the changes. So, how can this change be managed?
Here are the key components that make for a just transition of our food systems:
Worker Protection and Employment:
Safe and well-paid jobs
Unemployment benefits, safety nets, and income support for displaced workers
Training programs to set them up for sustainable careers
Environmental and Intergenerational Justice:
Environmental restoration of sites damaged by extractive industries, such as the polluted waterways and deforested land
New green technologies that do not rely on exploitative practices
Community and Social Equity:
Community engagement in the form of consultation and negotiations involving workers, unions, businesses and government
Control over food production and access to healthy, sustainable food
With a quarter of the world working in agriculture, how can financial actors and development organisations support farmers in this much-needed transition? Let's take a look.
Finance Can Relieve Rural Communities Around the Globe With a Transition to Plant-Based Farming
Financial institutions are crucial for ensuring the food transition does not leave rural communities behind. Yet today, so much agricultural finance still supports environmentally damaging industrial livestock production.
In 2023, development banks directed more than $3 billion towards factory farming projects, while only 2% of funding supported smaller-scale farming systems.
Meanwhile, the scale of investment required to move towards a just transition is substantial. The Wildlife Trusts estimate that the UK alone needs £4.4 billion annually to support a just transition towards a low-emissions food system. This is a large figure, but it pales in comparison to the billions already provided to factory farming corporations by retail banks every single year: from 2015 to 2022 the UK’s largest bank, Barclays, supplied the world’s largest meat processing company, JBS, with 6.7 billion US dollars in corporate loans, revolving credit facilities, and bond insurances.
These contrasting figures reveal the essence of the disconnect: while governments and scientists warn that food systems must rapidly decarbonise, financial institutions continue backing the industries driving emissions and deforestation. But they also reveal a great opportunity to re-allocate capital from the damaging agricultural practices already being funded to actions that support the development of plant-based food production compatible with our planetary boundaries.
A just food transition will affect regions across the world differently and cause immense change in employment across agricultural commodities. Financial institutions need to position themselves to best support affected workers and communities as the world shifts to a sustainable food system.
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Banks Should Stop Financing Factory Farming, and You Can Too
Don’t let banks use your money to fund industrial animal agriculture.
Help to create a truly just transition of our food system by urging your bank to ditch factory farm finance and invest in a plant-based food system.
If you’re in the UK, we even have a step-by-step guide on how to switch your bank to a more ethical one.
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