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How will we help the billions of farmed animals in Low- and Middle-Income Countries?
8 min read · Feb 28, 2025
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Written by Thomas Billington and Karthik Pulugurtha
TL;DR
Interested in getting involved?
We are planning a 2025 research project into sustainable agriculture projects in LMICs and how their strategies might apply to farmed animal advocacy.
We are seeking collaborators for both the research phase and a potential follow-up charity. Please fill out our expression of interest form.
The farmed animal protection movement is a global community tackling a global problem. We have achieved significant milestones in high-income countries. [1] However, in 2021 roughly 80%[2] of movement funds went to organisations in Europe and the US, which farm only a small fraction of animals (approximately 6%).[3] This is despite major EAA funders stating interest in funding more projects in places like Asia, Africa, and The Middle East.[4][5]
World Bank Group country classifications by income level[6] | Global Livestock Distribution and Density[7] |
Within low- and middle-income countries (LMICs, a term we will use to mean any country that is not a high-income country) the movement has seen important but limited successes. These regions present unique challenges that typical Western-centric advocacy models weren't designed to address, including:
These challenges leave our movement facing a critical question: How do we build a successful movement for (the majority of) farmed animals who live in LMICs?
Western advocacy tactics (such as corporate campaigns or policy advocacy) often translate poorly to LMIC contexts where:
LMICs also feature vast regional and cultural differences that create both challenges (such as India's domestic carp farming market with minimal international accountability) and opportunities (like Brazil's well-established farmer unions, which offer potential leverage points).
This isn't to say established approaches like corporate campaigning can't work in LMICs (we've seen some promising results).[8] However, these approaches often lack supporting infrastructure to make them effective. For example, producers may lack trained labour or governments may lack enforcement capabilities. Interventions may need to both create change and develop the systems to sustain that change.
Global Food Partners' (GFP) Impact Incentives program illustrates how the movement can adapt existing models to address infrastructure gaps. Their cage-free credits system allows corporations to "offset" caged egg purchases to fulfill cage-free pledges, helping resolve issues caused by limited supply chain control. Another structural challenge for cage-free is that farmers lack the knowledge and guidance necessary to transition. As such, GFP is establishing model farms as education hubs for prospective cage-free farmers.
Global Food Partner’s Impact Incentives Label.[9]
This work highlights how progress in LMICs often requires multiple foundational steps, each a substantial project in itself (e.g., creating systems for farmers to access credits and education). Identifying and addressing these infrastructure needs is likely key to creating change in LMICs.
It's crucial that we develop this infrastructure in ways that don't accelerate industrialized farming—and ideally, help divert development away from it. For example, major egg companies often help farmers to access loans to transition to caged systems. By proactively integrating farmers into networks that require higher welfare standards from the outset, we could potentially intercept this path to industrialization.
How do we build this infrastructure? Can we do so in a way that also directly benefits animals? And how will we improve conditions for the vast numbers of animals not sold to large corporations (e.g. sold in local markets and mom-and-pop stores)?
Farms in LMICs have several promising leverage points that could both create direct change and address infrastructure gaps:
| Leverage Point | Direct Benefits | Infrastructural Benefits |
| Co-operatives: a business owned by farmers that pools resources to help each other. & Farmer producer organizations: an organization that provides groups of farmers support and services. | Can establish welfare-based membership rules that farmers must follow to access services. Can offer farmer training and knowledge sharing. | Collectivising allows farmers to engage with larger corporations (who may have welfare commitments), receive coordinated training and auditing, and access certification through schemes like the participatory guarantee system. Can provide farmers with guarantees (e.g., lower feed prices through bulk purchase) that make welfare improvements feel less financially risky (e.g. buying higher quality feed). |
| Government Institutions: An organization that is established by a government, or is owned or controlled by a government (this is distinct from policy advocacy, as typically government institutions cannot create policies). | Can run/enable schemes that train or otherwise enable farmer best practices (e.g. India’s National Centre for Organic and Natural Farming).
| Can run schemes that consolidate farmers or other stakeholders (e.g. Mom-and-Pop stores), enabling collective action and guarantees that empower farmers to take on riskier welfare improvements (e.g. cage-free with a guaranteed purchase)
Can provide funding for NGOs working on welfare-aligned projects
Can influence other institutions through advisories and recommended standards (see Animal Welfare League’s work with the Ghana Standards Authority). |
| Banks: Farmers access credit and loans from banks. | Can offer preferential interest rates for farmers following welfare best practices Can attract membership to cooperatives or farmer producer organizations through credit/loan schemes. | Enable welfare improvements requiring significant upfront investment (e.g. barn transition for cage-free using loans like these from Axis bank). |
| Trusted Informants: e.g. vets, feed suppliers, community leaders, experienced farmers. | Can offer advice and examples to farmers on best practices (e.g. model farms). | Create additional communication channels for farmer education. |
Buyers: Such as brokers, local market vendors, etc.
| Can establish welfare-based purchasing criteria (e.g. certification). | Connect farmers to larger corporate buyers with welfare commitments. |
| Other life-stage farmers: Farmers specializing in either reproduction & breeding; early rearing & nursery; growth & finishing; or processing & slaughter. | Later-stage producers can influence earlier stages through their purchasing criteria (e.g. certification). | Higher welfare across life stages creates mutually reinforcing benefits (e.g. animals will have fewer diseases, and so meeting welfare standards is easier). |
| Local markets: A marketplace where buyers and sellers meet within a specific area, like a city or neighborhood. These are often informal wet-markets, farmers markets or markets set-up by local governments. | Can control vendor access based on welfare practice (especially government-owned markets) | Can create consumer awareness and interest for higher welfare products. |
As a hypothetical example, consider a project aiming to reduce stocking density in Indian poultry farms. It might begin by establishing a farmer producer organization (FPO) for farmers, requiring a stocking cap but providing farmers with bulk-purchasing benefits for higher-quality feed (which would likely improve welfare further). This model could then be adopted by other cooperatives. Simultaneously, evidence of the environmental impact of high-density production could be presented to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to trigger an investigation. Once enough farmers (perhaps 1,000) participate in the lower-density scheme and pressure mounts from CPCB, local government agencies would be more likely to adopt lower stocking densities as a government-led program.
This approach remains speculative for animal welfare. Effective application will likely require extensive testing, and different contexts may need different leverage points or combinations thereof.[10] However, we can gain valuable insights by studying how other movements have successfully transformed agricultural practices in LMICs.
Sectors such as sustainability, ecosystem protection, and antimicrobial resistance have extensive experience changing agricultural practices in LMICs. This work is often grounded in both academic research and years of field experience. By leveraging these learnings, the animal movement could dramatically accelerate our development or even whole-sale copy proven models for changing LMIC animal agriculture (similar to how Global Food Partners adapted the carbon credits concept).
The sustainability movement offers particularly relevant parallels to animal welfare work. Both often require similar changes (like farmers adopting best management practices), may not align with farmers' immediate economic interests, and involve stakeholders with limited incentives to change. Despite these challenges, organizations like WWF, Digital Green, and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa claim to have made significant progress in improving sustainability on LMIC farms.
An example of such work would be Deforestation and Conversion-Free (DCF) beef farming in Latin America. Despite 15 years of effort and corporate interest,[11] companies are reluctant to pay premiums for DCF products.[12] Rather than relying solely on corporate leverage, sustainability actors have:
A more sustainable ranching system in Paraguay[17]
Corporations such as Grupo LALA, a dairy company and member of the Latin American Conservation Council, are also getting involved but through ensuring secure year-round supply, rather than a price premium.[18] Suggestions have also been made for slaughterhouses to only accept DCF cattle.[19]
Similarly, nonprofits across India have influenced farmer producer organization (FPO) bylaws to promote sustainability. Organizations like Centre for Sustainable Agriculture have used FPOs to reduce pesticide use potentially across 16% of Andhra Pradesh's farmers.[20]
While not all sustainability projects align with animal welfare concerns (see sustainable intensification), studying how sustainability efforts have succeeded in LMICs may uncover valuable strategies to accelerate our impact.
The farmed animal movement is still relatively young, and our greatest challenges lie ahead. Achieving large-scale success in LMICs will likely require reassessing our movement's core tactics. While none of the approaches outlined above guarantee impact, they represent alternative pathways worth exploring
Several organizations focused on LMICs are already expanding our understanding of effective change strategies, including:
With collective effort, open-mindedness, and collaboration, we can improve the lives of farmed animals in LMICs. If we act quickly, we may even have opportunities to guide the development of animal agriculture away from the harmful industrialized systems prevalent in high-income countries.[21]
In 2025, we're launching a research project investigating:"How has the Sustainability Movement Created Change in Agriculture in LMICs, and how might this be applied to farmed animal advocacy?"
Depending on the findings, this research may lead to the founding of an organization dedicated to field-testing the most promising models identified.
We're looking for collaborators! If you're interested in contributing to either the research or the potential organization, please complete our expression of interest form. Opportunities include advisory roles, volunteer positions, or paid work (we plan to apply for funding for our initial research).
Other ways you can help:
Our current thinking is to use a mixture of both incentives and disincentives, with a unified One Health messaging that helps to create an industry norm. We intend to write more on our thoughts of how change happens in LMIC agriculture in the future.
We intend to look further into if and where opportunities for preventing industrialized farming may be present.
