A Just Transition Away From Cruel Factory Farming Must Center Indigenous Leadership

World Animal Protection, alongside our key partner Center for Biological Diversity, has been working globally to co-create a framework for effectively transitioning away from industrial animal agriculture—also called factory farming—due to the cruelty, exploitation, abuse, and destruction embedded in this model of production. 

In the US, we launched our Just Food Transition roadmap in April 2026 with contributions from several organizations working on food justice, sustainability, human rights, climate, and animal protection, with endorsement by dozens of others. 

The US roadmap asserts that a just transition from harmful factory farming can only be achieved in partnership with Indigenous peoples, small- and mid-scale farmers, workers, and frontline and fenceline communities. Only through their inclusion can a transition to equitable, humane, and sustainable farming address inequality, end violence, and achieve food sovereignty for everyone. 

How Industrial Agriculture Has Harmed Indigenous Communities

The reality is that our modern, industrialized, capital-intensive food system has disenfranchised and suppressed Indigenous farmers, communities, and agricultural knowledge. 

Today in the US, more than 95% of all farmland owners are white, despite the farming population historically being far more diverse. This is a direct result of a long history of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color being systemically excluded from land ownership, access to affordable credit, technical assistance, and participation in federal farm support programs. For example, discriminatory practices by the USDA throughout the 20th century severely limited such farmers’ access to vital farm loans and disaster relief programs that were critical to maintaining ownership and viability of their farms. 

Rapid expansion of animal production industries, especially the exploitation of cows for meat and dairy, was achieved at the expense and peril of Indigenous populations across the modern-day United States. The centralization of markets and the push toward meat-heavy diets in the US greatly increased both wealth and land control for colonizers. Our industrial system of exploitation, violence, dispossession, and injustice that US animal agriculture is rooted in continues to perpetuate disproportionate harms against Indigenous communities. Indigenous people in the United States are more likely to live near industrial animal agriculture facilities that produce enormous amounts of toxic pollution. In North Carolina, for example, where hog facilities in the state produce over 9 billion gallons of liquid waste and sludge per year, more than twice as many Indigenous people live within three miles of an industrial hog facility as non-Hispanic whites. Studies have proven that proximity to such facilities is linked to higher risks of health issues, including cardiovascular mortality, gastrointestinal illness, and allergic and respiratory disease. 

Indigenous Food Sovereignty Is Essential to a Just Transition

A just food transition must center Indigenous food sovereignty. Indigenous food sovereignty is a vision of interdependency for bringing foodways back in balance with the Earth that includes restoring principles of relationship and responsibility between human communities and the land, refreshing cultural practices, and reclaiming land. Indigenous food sovereignty includes tribal control over food policies, land management, and food traditions and promotes foodways that support ecological health, are community-based and fair, and emphasize just access to healthy and nutritious foods. 

A just transition in US agriculture must therefore be rooted in the decolonization of food and farming, including returning land to Indigenous peoples and promoting knowledge-sharing and traditional practices. It must also include a recognition of the historical legacy of colonization, settler violence, and the dispossession of land in the United States. Decolonizing food and farming can support Indigenous food sovereignty while building a more sustainable food system for everyone.

Centering Communities and Indigenous Leadership

A contributor to the US Just Transition Roadmap is the Cooperative Food Empower Directive (CoFED), which is building a cooperative food economy powered by the visionary leadership of Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous People of Color (QTBIPOC) and believes strongly that the work of liberation and empowerment must center those who have been historically marginalized in order to dismantle systemic inequities. 

One of the roadmap’s many endorsements is from HEAL Food Alliance, a national multi-sector, multi-racial coalition of 55 organizations led by members who represent over 2 million rural and urban farmers, ranchers, fishers, farm and food chain workers, Indigenous groups, scientists, public health advocates, policy experts, community organizers, and activists. 

We will continue engaging with these and other groups providing Indigenous perspectives and advancing Indigenous leadership. World Animal Protection has brought together thought leaders from various sectors to co-create a broad policy framework. But precisely how a just food transition will look on the ground in the various regions of the US, and what policy action may be needed, will need to be driven by the members of those communities.

Explore the US Just Food Transition Roadmap

Check out the US Just Food Transition Roadmap and supplemental materials at https://justfoodtransitionnetwork.com/us-roadmap.  

Note: In our commitment to fostering inclusivity, we have chosen to employ the term “indigenous” as the overarching descriptor for this blog. We acknowledge that the people featured may also align with alternative nomenclature, such as Native American, Native, American Indian, Alaskan Native, and so forth.