Vulnerability of US dairy farms to extreme heat

IF 6.8 1区经济学 Q1 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY

Food Policy Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI:10.1016/j.foodpol.2025.102821

Jared Hutchins , Marin Skidmore , Derek Nolan

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Livestock agriculture, and dairy more specifically, is threatened by climate change as extreme weather conditions become more frequent. When temperature and humidity increase above critical levels, dairy cows become heat-stressed and experience a drop in milk production. We quantify the impact of heat stress on the dairy industry throughout the Midwestern and Eastern United States in the years 2012–2016 using animal-level production data. We estimate that 1% of total annual yield is lost to heat stress, and losses are predicted to increase about 30% by 2050 on average under various climate scenarios. We provide three new insights compared to previous estimates with aggregated data. (1) Heat stress disproportionately affects milk quality, having larger impacts on farm income and nutritional value than previously estimated. (2) Small farms experience the largest losses to heat stress, suggesting they face barriers to adaptation. (3) Cows in the highest-yield production stage are the most vulnerable to heat stress in both relative and absolute terms. Our results have global implications given the prevalence of dairy as a source of income and nutrition in high- and low-income contexts. We outline ways that funds for climate-smart agriculture could be used to increase climate resilience in the dairy industry.

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来源期刊

Food Policy 管理科学-农业经济与政策

CiteScore

11.40

自引率

4.60%

发文量

128

审稿时长

62 days

期刊介绍： Food Policy is a multidisciplinary journal publishing original research and novel evidence on issues in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of policies for the food sector in developing, transition, and advanced economies. Our main focus is on the economic and social aspect of food policy, and we prioritize empirical studies informing international food policy debates. Provided that articles make a clear and explicit contribution to food policy debates of international interest, we consider papers from any of the social sciences. Papers from other disciplines (e.g., law) will be considered only if they provide a key policy contribution, and are written in a style which is accessible to a social science readership.