<b> Surinder Sud: </b>Climate toll on livestock

Small and marginal farmers and backyard livestock keepers need institutional & public policy support

How will climate change impact livestock production? This question is significant for several reasons. For one, livestock contributes over 25 per cent of the agriculture sector’s gross domestic product (agri-GDP). Besides, the prices of livestock products like milk, eggs, meat and fish are among the major drivers of food inflation. Moreover, this is a fast growing sector with a steady annual growth of nearly 5.6 per cent. The output of milk has risen annually by 4.2 per cent, eggs five per cent, fish (mainly farm-grown fish) eight per cent and meat 8.3 per cent. This apart, livestock, more than the crop farming, constitute the mainstay of livelihood of a vast section of the rural poor, including small and marginal farmers and landless people. Nearly 70 per cent of the country’s animal population is owned and nurtured by them.

However, since the animals have a rather limited ability to adjust to environmental factors like temperature, humidity and wind speed, their health and productivity get tangibly affected by climatic changes. They show their optimum genetic production potential only within a narrow range of climatic fluctuations. Heat stress is one of the most formidable banes of farm animals though other adverse environmental factors, too, affect them in various ways.

Milk yield of cattle can dip by anywhere between 10 and 25 per cent due to heat stress, depending on the intensity and duration of temperature abnormality. Desi (indigenous) cattle breeds are relatively sturdier and can withstanding harsher ambient conditions while crossbred cows and buffaloes lack such resilience. Poultry birds are extremely sensitive to temperature aberrations because they do not have sweat glands. The other farm animals, including goats and sheep, are also susceptible to sharp climatic changes.

Studies conducted by the Karnal-based National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) have shown that a deviation of more than 4ºC in the maximum temperature in summer and over 3ºC in winter adversely affects the milk yield of crossbred cows and buffaloes. The decline in output can vary from 10 to 30 per cent in the animal’s first lactation (milking cycle) and five to 20 per cent in the subsequent lactations. The overall climate-induced loss in the total annual milk production has been estimated by the NDRI study at around 1.6 million tonnes by 2020 and above 15 million tonnes by 2050.

What is worse, the fertility and reproduction rate of farm animals, too, is at stake. A Policy Paper (No. 81) entitled “Climate resilient livestock production”, brought out recently by the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), maintains that reproduction in most livestock species has already been hit by the prevailing climatic conditions during summer and rainy seasons. Apart from the direct impact, abnormal weather events affect the livestock sector indirectly as well by reducing the availability of feed and fodder. Besides, it exacerbates the risk of outbreak of diseases as warmer conditions tend to stimulate the growth of disease-causing pathogens and parasites. Higher frequency of extreme climatic events like droughts and floods, on the other hand, is believed to encourage the development of bacterial, viral and parasitic ailments.

Urgent attention is, therefore, needed to stave off adverse effects of global warming on livestock. However, the ways and means to do so are neither readily available nor foolproof. The strategies have to be situation- as well as animal-specific. Unlike crops, where climate-resilient strains can be bred through modern breeding tools, it is not so easy to do that in animals. The efforts to do so most often result in performance deterioration.

Among the numerous climate-adaptation approaches mooted in the NAAS paper, the significant ones include feed management, improved animal housing, community animal shelters and air- and water-based heat alleviation measures. However, most of these practices, too, have their limitations. While the organised sector livestock entrepreneurs can go in for measures like protective and environment-controlled housing, the small and marginal farmers and backyard livestock keepers are ill-equipped to do so. They will need institutional and public policy support to minimise the climate-induced impairment in livestock performance.

surinder.sud@gmail.com