Looming climate change may be economically hard for low-income cattle farmers in poor countries due to increasing heat stress on the animals.
Looming climate change may be economically hard for low-income cattle farmers in poor countries due to increasing heat stress on the animals. Globally, by the end of this century those producers may face financial loss between $15 and $40 billion annually.
Farmers in tropical regions – including large parts of South America, Asia and Africa – are likely to suffer significantly, particularly when compared with producers in the world’s wealthier temperate zones, according to a study by an international team of scientists and economists published March 9 in the Lancet Planetary Health.
“Economic losses will mostly occur in low- and middle-income countries,” said Mario Herrero, professor of sustainable food systems and global change in the Department of Global Development, in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “Relative to the total value of dairy and meat production, it’s a significant and a higher proportion than in high-income countries.”
Herrero, along with lead author Philip Thornton, of the International Livestock Research Institute and CGIAR; Gerald Nelson, of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Dianne Mayberry, of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia, have published “Impacts of Heat Stress on Global Cattle Production During the 21st Century.”
Read more at Cornell University
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