A new study finds extreme heat reduces milk production by up to 10 percent and adding cooling technologies only offsets about half of the loss.
A new study finds extreme heat reduces milk production by up to 10 percent and adding cooling technologies only offsets about half of the loss.
While recent studies have shown climate change will cut crop production, there has been less research into its impacts on livestock. Dairy farmers already know their cows are vulnerable to heat. What will more heat mean? In one of the most comprehensive assessments of heat’s impact on dairy cows, a study in the journal Science Advances finds one day of extreme heat can cut milk production by up to 10 percent. The effects of that hot weather can last more than 10 days later, with efforts to keep cows cool being insufficient.
“Climate change will have wide-ranging impacts on what we eat and drink, including that cold glass of milk,” says one of the study’s co-authors Eyal Frank, an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy. “Our study found that extreme heat leads to significant and lasting impacts on milk supply, and even the most high-tech, well-resourced farms are deploying adaptation strategies that may be an insufficient match to climate change.”
Frank and his co-authors Claire Palandri, Ayal Kimhi, Yaniv Lavon, Ephraim Ezra, and Ram Fishman studied the dairy industry in Israel, an advanced dairy system representative of top milk producing countries. The researchers analyze highly local weather data to measure humid heat’s impact on more than 130,000 Israeli dairy cows over 12 years. They then survey more than 300 dairy farmers to see how much cooling technologies have helped.
Read more at The University of Chicago
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