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Agriculture
Special Issues
Climate Change and Livestock: Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation
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Climate Change and Livestock: Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation

A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Farm Animal Production".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 August 2021) | Viewed by 16408

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Isabel Blanco-Penedo

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor
Department of Clinical Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
Interests: animal welfare; organic farming; farm sustainability; veterinary epidemiology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the open-access journal Agriculture, I am pleased to announce a new Special Issue entitled “Climate Change and Livestock: Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation”.

Global climate change is increasingly affecting agricultural and livestock production, with an overwhelmingly negative effect on animal health and welfare as well as the whole farm systems. The livestock sector must urgently work towards more efficient and sustainable productivity and meet higher standards of animal health and welfare. Agro-livestock sector practices should consider the need for continuous adaptation (resilience) to an ever-changing environment that offers solutions to buffer climate extremes, changing nutrient availability, seasonal forage availability, disease epidemiology, and other new challenges in an environment of heterogeneous conditions. This Special Issue aims to collect the most up-to-date scientific knowledge on the impact of climate change on animal agriculture, with a focus on the specificities of agricultural systems, adaptation strategies of livestock systems that can be implemented to reduce this impact, the impacts of mitigation strategies on animal welfare, as well as identifying opportunities to investigate new adaptation and mitigation strategies.

We invite you to contribute to this Issue by submitting comprehensive reviews, case studies, or research articles based on your expertise in this area.

Dr. Isabel Blanco-Penedo
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agriculture is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Global climate change
  • Sustainable production
  • Animal welfare
  • Agricultural innovations
  • Farm resilience
  • Researching mitigation strategies

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

7 pages, 533 KiB  
Communication
Influence of Copra Meal in the Lambs Diet on In Vitro Ruminal Kinetics and Greenhouse Gases Production
by Héctor Aarón Lee-Rangel, Anayeli Vázquez Valladolid, Heriberto Mendez-Cortes, Juan Carlos Garcia-Lopez, Gregorio Álvarez-Fuentes, Jose Alejandro Roque-Jimenez, Mario Alejandro Mejia-Delgadillo, Luis Octavio Negrete-Sánchez, Oswaldo Cifuentes-López and Hugo Magdaleno Ramírez-Tobías
Agriculture 2021, 11(10), 925; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11100925 - 26 Sep 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2390
Abstract
The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of copra meal (the waste coconut of the oil industry) on in vitro ruminal kinetic and greenhouse gases production and on in vivo lamb performance. Twenty-eight male Rambouillet sheep (initial body weight 24.5 ± 3.9 [...] Read more.
The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of copra meal (the waste coconut of the oil industry) on in vitro ruminal kinetic and greenhouse gases production and on in vivo lamb performance. Twenty-eight male Rambouillet sheep (initial body weight 24.5 ± 3.9 kg) were randomly assigned to one of the four treatments: 0, 50, 100, and 150 g of copra meal/kg in their diet (dry matter basis). Final weight, weight gain, and feed intake were not affected (p > 0.05) by the copra meal addition. The gas production volume (V) decreased, and the gas production rate increased, in a linear trend (p < 0.05) as copra meal was added to the diet. In contrast, methane and CO2 production showed an opposite quadratic trend (p < 0.05), with the highest and lowest values reported at 100 g/kg DM of copra meal, respectively. The addition of copra meal in the lambs’ diet decreases the volume of gas production and is a strategy to decrease methane and carbon dioxide production in feeding without affecting animal performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Livestock: Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation)
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15 pages, 315 KiB  
Article
Methane Emission and Milk Production from Jersey Cows Grazing Perennial Ryegrass–White Clover and Multispecies Forage Mixtures
by Cecilia Loza, Thorsten Reinsch, Ralf Loges, Friedhelm Taube, José Ignacio Gere, Christof Kluß, Mario Hasler and Carsten S. Malisch
Agriculture 2021, 11(2), 175; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11020175 - 20 Feb 2021
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 9466
Abstract
Methane is a major constituent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ruminants, and mitigation strategies are needed to alleviate this negative environmental impact while maintaining the environmental and other benefits of grazing systems. Forages containing plant-specialized metabolites (PSM), particularly condensed tannins, may help [...] Read more.
Methane is a major constituent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ruminants, and mitigation strategies are needed to alleviate this negative environmental impact while maintaining the environmental and other benefits of grazing systems. Forages containing plant-specialized metabolites (PSM), particularly condensed tannins, may help reduce enteric methane (CH4) emissions. However, information on in vivo CH4 emissions from cows grazing mixtures that contain bioactive herbs is scarce. Accordingly, this study compared a binary mixture of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) and white clover (Trifolium repens) against a diverse mixture of six additional species, including tannin-rich species like birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) and salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor), in a full-grazing dairy system. Enteric CH4 emissions were measured using the SF6 tracer technique. Cows grazing diverse mixtures increased their energy-corrected milk (ECM) yield by 4% (p < 0.001) compared with binary mixtures. However, CH4 emissions per kg ECM were also 11% greater for the diverse mixtures (p < 0.05). The very high feed quality and milk yield from both mixtures explained the low CH4 emissions recorded relative to the milk output. The addition of forbs did not provide additional benefits at these intensities, as they were maintained in low yield shares throughout. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Livestock: Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation)
22 pages, 1791 KiB  
Article
Economic Risk Assessment by Weather-Related Heat Stress Indices for Confined Livestock Buildings: A Case Study for Fattening Pigs in Central Europe
by Günther Schauberger, Martin Schönhart, Werner Zollitsch, Stefan J. Hörtenhuber, Leopold Kirner, Christian Mikovits, Johannes Baumgartner, Martin Piringer, Werner Knauder, Ivonne Anders, Konrad Andre and Isabel Hennig-Pauka
Agriculture 2021, 11(2), 122; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11020122 - 03 Feb 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3039
Abstract
In the last decades, farm animals kept in confined and mechanically ventilated livestock buildings have been increasingly confronted with heat stress (HS) due to global warming. These adverse conditions cause a depression of animal health and welfare and a reduction of the performance [...] Read more.
In the last decades, farm animals kept in confined and mechanically ventilated livestock buildings have been increasingly confronted with heat stress (HS) due to global warming. These adverse conditions cause a depression of animal health and welfare and a reduction of the performance up to an increase in mortality. To facilitate sound management decisions, livestock farmers need relevant arguments, which quantify the expected economic risk and the corresponding uncertainty. The economic risk was determined for the pig fattening sector based on the probability of HS and the calculated decrease in gross margin. The model calculation for confined livestock buildings showed that HS indices calculated by easily available meteorological parameters can be used for assessment quantification of indoor HS, which has been difficult to determine. These weather-related HS indices can be applied not only for an economic risk assessment but also for weather-index based insurance for livestock farms. Based on the temporal trend between 1981 and 2017, a simple model was derived to assess the likelihood of HS for 2020 and 2030. Due to global warming, the return period for a 90-percentile HS index is reduced from 10 years in 2020 to 3–4 years in 2030. The economic impact of HS on livestock farms was calculated by the relationship between an HS index based on the temperature-humidity index (THI) and the reduction of gross margin. From the likelihood of HS and this economic impact function, the probability of the economic risk was determined. The reduction of the gross margin for a 10-year return period was determined for 1980 with 0.27 € per year per animal place and increased by 20-fold to 5.13 € per year per animal place in 2030. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Livestock: Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation)
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