Animal board invited review: Specialising and intensifying cattle production for better efficiency and less global warming: contrasting results for milk and meat co-production at different scales

SummaryCross-breeding with European beef breeds has become a standard approach for the intensification of smallholder cattle production in Indonesia. This study assessed the environmental impact of cross-breeding, in terms of Global Warming Potential (GWP) and land use. We sampled 90 local Ongole and 162 cross-bred (Simmental × Ongole) cattle farms in four study areas. Expressed per kilogram of live weight of young stock produced, GWP (26.9 kg CO2–equivalents) and land use (34.2 m2) of farms with Ongole breeding stock were not significantly different from the GWP (28.9 kg CO2–equivalents) and land use (37.4 m2) of cross-bred farms. Cross-bred young stock grew faster, but in general cross-bred cattle required more feed. In the current smallholder production system, the dominant cross-breeding practice of using Simmental semen on Ongole andF1cross-bred cows does not result in lower greenhouse gas emissions or land use per kilogram of live weight produced compared with farms with Ongole cows. The advantage from the faster growth of cross-breds is counteracted by the higher emissions from feed production for cross-breds.

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Impact of global warming on beef cattle production cost in Brazil

10.13031/cc.20152134789 ◽

2015 ◽

Keyword(s):

Global Warming ◽

Beef Cattle ◽

Production Cost ◽

Cattle Production ◽

Beef Cattle Production

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Impact of global warming on beef cattle production cost in Brazil

Scientia Agricola ◽

10.1590/s0103-90162010000100001 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 67 (1) ◽

pp. 01-08 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Irenilza de Alencar Nääs ◽

Carlos Eduardo Bites Romanini ◽

Douglas D'Alessandro Salgado ◽

Karla Andrea Oliveira Lima ◽

Marcos Martinez do Vale ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Global Warming ◽

Beef Cattle ◽

Air Temperature ◽

Production Cost ◽

Environmental Data ◽

Production Costs ◽

Cattle Production ◽

Grazing Land ◽

Beef Cattle Production ◽

The Impact

Global warming is affecting agribusiness in its economic aspects. Therefore, the prediction of the evolution of Brazilian beef cattle production cost was made using the IPCC forecast scenario for global warming. The methodology consisted of two steps: (i) the development of a fuzzy model that estimated the grazing land capacity (RP) decrease risk as a function of the changes in the average total rain index, air temperature and increase in extension of the dry season; and (ii) the design of an algorithm for predicting the decrease in production as function of the RPfuzzy model, that results in the impact in beef cattle productivity, and consequent increase in production costs. Historical environmental data from important producing counties in the Cerrado were organized and a set of fuzzy Gaussian functions were developed, and three possible settings (optimistic, medium and pessimistic) were considered. The decrease in beef cattle productivity was estimated using the losses in production due to the increase in air temperature and vulnerability of pasture capacity. The boundary settings for the total increase of production cost scenario used the number of animals per area of grazing land, the adoption of grain supplement and its future scenario; and the result output function pointed to a threshold within a variation from an increase in production cost of 80% (optimistic) to 160% (pessimistic). Under the optimistic scenario the total cost of Brazilian beef cattle production in the Cerrado became near to US$ 2.88 kg-1, while in the pessimistic scenario this cost reached US$ 4.16 kg-1, challenging the international competitiveness of this economic segment.

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Modelling ecosystem adaptation and dangerous rates of global warming

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20180113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 221-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Rebecca Millington ◽

Peter M. Cox ◽

Jonathan R. Moore ◽

Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Diffusion Rate ◽

Individual Species ◽

Genetic Evolution ◽

Rates Of Change ◽

Rapid Climate Change ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Intraspecies Competition ◽

High Trait

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).

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