Summary * I would say the total welfare of soil animals is overdetermined to be much larger than that of farmed invertebrates in absolute terms. The individual welfare per animal-year of soil ants and termites should not differ much from that of farmed invertebrates, and I calculate the population of soil ants and termites is 3.93 M times that of farmed black soldier fly (BSF) larvae and mealworms, and 652 k times that of farmed shrimps. * Projects targeting soil animals receive way less funding than ones targeting farmed invertebrates. The Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) granted 460 k$ to projects targeting invertebrates until 7 November 2025. In contrast, the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP) received 2.9 M$ in 2024. * I believe interventions changing land use can increase welfare much more cost-effectively than ones targeting farmed invertebrates accounting for effects on soil animals. I estimate funding the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research’s (CEARCH’s) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF), which I calculate increases agricultural land by 1.29 k m2-years per $, changes the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes 3.43 k times as cost-effectively as SWP’s Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) increases the welfare of shrimps. * I recommend research on the welfare of soil animals in different biomes over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively look the most cost-effective. I have little idea about whether funding HIPF, or any other way of changing land use increases or decreases welfare. I am very uncertain about what increases or decreases soil-animal-years, and whether soil animals have positive or negative lives. * There is no escape from the uncertainty of the effects on soil animals if one wants to increase animal welfare accounting for all animals. I do not know about any interventions which robustly increase animal welfare due to dominant uncertain effects on soil animals. I conclude electrically stunning farmed shri

Looking into this a bit more, from this thread it seems like OP's grants database may currently be missing as much as half of their 2025 GCR spending. 

This is an incredible first post! Thanks so much for sharing!

This is really awesome work, it's great to have someone put this together! Hopefully the drop in @GiveWell's grants is just a timing or reporting issue and not nearly as large as it seems. Maybe they'll be able to clarify further!  If you wanted to extend this and cover more EA grants, I know Farmkind has a public database of grants from their platform that would be great to add. It also would be awesome if this could capture high-impact donations from Founders Pledge, but I'm not sure they provide granular enough data to be able to track by year and cause area. Maybe talking to @Matt_Lerner could shed some insight?