The Cow in the Room: Philanthropy for a Climate-Friendly Food System
From: Zoë Sigle, Farmed Animal Funders
To: Interested donors, animal allies, and climate champions
Re: The Cow in the Room: Philanthropy for a Climate-Friendly Food System
Date: April 22, 2025
The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, theorizes that just 20% of inputs result in 80% of outputs. As a relatable example, you may use 20% of your kitchen items 80% of the time—your favorite mug, your trusty non-stick pan, your daily smoothie blender. Meanwhile, the remaining 80%—the fondue set from Aunt Betty, the “special occasion” plates, the Tupperware containers missing lids—leave your cabinets only 20% of the time.
Key to any philanthropic strategy is identifying key inputs that have an outsized impact on outputs. For climate and food systems philanthropists who prioritize a future with a livable planet and a viable global food supply, I call attention to the cow in the room: factory farming’s outsized impact on our climate and environment.
Why do we need to call attention to the “cow in the room”?
By and large, both the media and philanthropy neglect meat and dairy’s outsized role in fueling climate change. Only 7% of climate news articles mention animal agriculture. Similarly, only 8% of philanthropic spending for climate mitigation involves food and agriculture, and most of this 8% of funding likely supports regenerative agriculture projects not focused on climate change.
Giving Green shares: “We think the climate impact of livestock farming is especially neglected, partly due to the expected challenge of going against large agribusiness corporations.”
The inconvenient truth is that animal agriculture contributes significantly to climate change.
The convenient truth is that climate philanthropists can fund tremendously high-impact, neglected interventions diversifying proteins towards low-emission plant-based foods.
Photo by Bear Witness Australia / We Animals.
The inconvenient truth of animal agriculture
Our dairy milks, chicken nuggets, burgers, and other animal-based foods have the same climate impact in aggregate as our planes, trains, and automobiles. Animal agriculture is responsible for 14.5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. For context, the entire global transportation sector is responsible for 15% of emissions.
When we zoom into our food system and its impact on both the environment and our bellies, the Pareto Principle frequently applies when comparing animal-based and plant-based foods:
Climate Change: Animal-based foods produce two times the amount of greenhouse gases as plant-based foods. Plant-based foods—29% of food system emissions—produce 83% of global calories while animal-based foods—57% of food systems emissions—produce just 17% of global calories.
Land Use Change: Land use change contributes to biodiversity loss, natural disaster frequency, water quality, and destroyed carbon sinks. Agriculture uses up half of our habitable land globally. Of agricultural uses, animal agriculture uses 80% of agricultural lands and produces, again, only 17% of global calories. Plant-based agriculture uses 16% of agricultural lands and produces 83% of global calories.
Graph from Our World in Data, 2024.
Plant-based foods disproportionately feed people while animal-based foods disproportionately exacerbate climate change and destroy biodiverse carbon sinks.
Any future with a livable planet requires food system reform. If we were to halt all fossil fuel emissions this second, our current food system emissions would still put us over the threshold for meeting 1.5ºC or 2ºC climate targets.
Photo by Nadine Primeau on Unsplash.
The convenient truth for climate philanthropists
A viable food system in a world with fewer greenhouse gas emissions requires drastically cutting down on our society’s heavy reliance on animal products (which, by the way, has nearly doubled per capita in the last 65 years). Major global, climate, and health institutions—including the International Panel for Climate Change, United Nations, EAT-Lancet Commission, World Bank, European Commission, US National Climate Assessment, and World Health Organization—point to the need for dietary shifts emphasizing plant-based foods.
“The agrifood system is a huge, untapped source of low-cost climate change action. Unlike other sectors, it can have an outsize impact on climate change by drawing carbon from the atmosphere through ecosystems and soils.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ranks dietary shifts among the most effective solutions for mitigating climate change, estimating these changes could cut up to 8.0 Gigatons of CO2 equivalents per year by 2050. As a climate solution, funding dietary shift work has the second-highest ROI on climate change mitigation potential, only after improving cement production.
For climate philanthropists seeking neglected, yet high-impact, funding opportunities, the landscape of protein diversification interventions and NGOs is ripe for additional funding.
Building Demand: Institutional Diet Shift Reform
Our diets are personal—but our diets are also heavily influenced by our environment. To meet climate targets, dietary shifts are most feasibly and impactfully achieved at systemic, rather than individual, levels. This means engaging institutions, like governments and companies, to change our food environment so that plant-based choices are more enticing and accessible.
In more detail, non-profit organizations operationalize this theory of change by:
Working with top supermarket chains to increase their plant-to-animal protein sales ratio. For example, Wakker Dier and coalition partners in the Netherlands have successfully convinced eleven leading Dutch supermarket chains to sell 60% plant-based proteins by 2030.
Negotiating national plant-based action plans so governments fund the plant-based market’s growth. For example, Dansk Vegetarisk Forening collaborated with a broad range of Danish stakeholders and the government to produce the Danish Plant-Based Action Plan, featuring both consumption initiatives (e.g., training chefs on appealing plant-based cuisines) and production projects (e.g., advancing crop research for improved plant-based ingredients).
Supporting major foodservice providers of thousands of cafeterias to transition half of their menus to plant-based foods. For example, Greener By Default worked with Sodexo and the NYC Health + Hospitals system to extend a plant-based default choice architecture strategy. Instead of relying on consumers’ conscious decision-making, the plant-based defaults strategy relies on consumers’ habitual, automatic processes for meal choices, which don’t require deliberative change.In NYC Health + Hospitals, “half of all eligible patients opting for plant-based menu items—cutting the health system’s carbon emissions by over one-third in just its first year.”
Building Supply: Alternative Proteins
In recent decades, technological advancements have propelled climate solutions in the energy and transportation sectors, like solar energy and electric vehicles. These solutions succeeded, in part, because (1) the technologies replaced existing products with virtually no behavior change from the end-consumer, and (2) public funding heavily subsidized these technologies’ research and development.
Similarly, the alternative protein industry is developing proteins without the inefficiencies of breeding, raising, feeding, and slaughtering animals. Alternative proteins are cultivated from animal cells, made from plant ingredients, or produced via fermentation.
Like solar and EV technologies, alternative proteins aim to replace an inefficient product without significant behavior change for the end-consumer. And just like solar energy and electric vehicles, the alternative protein industry has the greatest chance of scaling for significant climate impact if governments subsidize the industry’s research, development, and growth. (And, of course, the US government alone already subsidizes the animal meat and dairy industries about $38 billion annually, so food subsidies are not novel.)
Philanthropy can support the growth of the alternative protein industry by:
Securing government funding. The Good Food Institute reports that public funding globally for alternative proteins increased from just $2 million in 2017 to $1.67 billion cumulatively (through end of 2023). The largest absolute growth in recent years has come from the United States, Denmark, the European Union, South Korea, and China.
Supporting regulatory approvals for novel foods. Non-profit organizations, including 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) organizations like Food Solutions Action and the Plant-Based Foods Association, are defending alternative proteins against various bills, such as those that aim to ban cultivated meat sales (such as 2025 Georgia House Bill 201, 2025 Kentucky House Bill 374, and 2024 Illinois House Bill 5872) or unfairly restrict labels (such as the 2024 US Federal FAIR Labels Act). Additionally, non-profit organizations can assist alternative protein companies in navigating the novel food regulatory landscapes and application processes. While some cultivated meat products have been approved in Singapore, the United States, Israel, and Australia, the European Food Safety Authority has yet to begin evaluating cultivated meats.
Supporting the R&D ecosystem. The Bezos Earth Fund recently committed $60 million to establish Centers for Sustainable Protein at various universities.
Comparing Approaches
The two theories of change outlined have strong climate impact potential by replacing animal products with lower-emission plant-based, cultivated, or fermented proteins at scale. Climate philanthropists might weigh one more heavily than the other in their giving portfolio based on key differences:
When considering the Pareto principle and the neglectedness of protein diversification philanthropy within the climate funding space, climate philanthropists have a clear opportunity for outsized GHG mitigation by maximizing portfolio contributions to protein diversification strategies.
However, not all food and agriculture climate interventions are high-impact. Some are ineffective, some exacerbate other environmental issues (like water quality, land use, and environmental racism), and some are just plain greenwashing. Considering the evidence base, I advise impact-focused climate philanthropists to minimize contributions to regenerative grazing projects, manure biogas public policy work, protein shifts promoting aquaculture or increased poultry and fish consumption, and initiatives for individual diet change, barring extraordinary circumstances.
Photo by Betty Suprizi on Unsplash.
The Climate + Food Systems Philanthropic Portfolio
Following desk research and expert consultation, Farmed Animal Funders has assembled a recommended portfolio of organizations executing high-impact protein diversification interventions. We believe they have the capacity to absorb at least $30 million in additional funding over the next year, with room to scale further in future years.
To protect organizational strategies, we don’t publish the comprehensive recommendation list nor the comprehensive intervention analyses. However, we invite major philanthropists (with the potential to scale to $100,ooo or more in annual philanthropy to protein diversification) to reach out to Farmed Animal Funders to access the full portfolio.
Farmed Animal Funders provides pro bono bespoke philanthropic advising to qualified philanthropists and philanthropic advisors, whether at the early stages of learning about the cause area or ready to deploy funds and track impact. To qualify for customized giving recommendations for major gifts, please register for advising.
Cultivating Impact spotlights solutions to reform and replace factory farming. It aims to connect philanthropic readers with high-impact funding opportunities, where each dollar goes tremendously far to reduce animal suffering and co-benefit the climate, environment, and people.
Cultivating Impact is produced by Zoë Sigle, the Director of Programs and Philanthropic Advisor for Farmed Animal Funders, a community of 45+ foundations and individuals donating $250,000+ annually to reform and replace factory farming. Additionally, Zoë serves as a Fund Manager with the Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund. With a decade of experience spanning corporate engagement, grantmaking, advocacy, and grassroots organizing, Zoë combines rigorous research with deep movement knowledge to craft effective philanthropic strategies. To learn more about this cause area or for bespoke philanthropic advising, contact Zoë.
