scholarly journals Economic Risk Assessment by Weather-Related Heat Stress Indices for Confined Livestock Buildings: A Case Study for Fattening Pigs in Central Europe

Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Günther Schauberger ◽  
Martin Schönhart ◽  
Werner Zollitsch ◽  
Stefan J. Hörtenhuber ◽  
Leopold Kirner ◽  
...  

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.

Author(s):  
Günther Schauberger ◽  
Martin Schönhart ◽  
Werner Zollitsch ◽  
Stefan J. Hörtenhuber ◽  
Leopold Kirner ◽  
...  

In the last decades farm animals kept in confined and mechanically ventilated livestock buildings are 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 of the 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 the 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 is so far difficult to determine. These weather-related HS indices can be applied not only for an economic risk assessment but also for a 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 the gross margin. From the likelihood of the HS and this economic impact function, the probability of the economic risk could be determined. The reduction of the gross margin for a 10 year return period was determined for 1980 with 0.27 € per year and animal place and increased by the 20-fold to 5.13 € per year and animal place in 2030.


Author(s):  
Günther Schauberger ◽  
Martin Schönhart ◽  
Werner Zollitsch ◽  
Stefan J. Hörtenhuber ◽  
Leopold Kirner ◽  
...  

Economic risks for livestock production are caused by volatile commodities and market conditions, but also by environmental drivers like increasing uncertainties due to weather anomalies and global warming. These risks impact the gross margin of farmers and can stimulated investment decisions. For confined pig and poultry production, farmers can reduce the environmental impact by implementing specific adaptation measures to reduce heat stress. A simulation model driven by meteorological data was used to calculate heat stress impact as a projection for 2030. For a business-as-usual livestock building, the indoor climate for several adaptation measures was calculated. The weather-related value-at risk quantified the economic risks caused by global warming and the stochastic component of the weather. The results show that only energy-saving adaptation measures to reduce the inlet air temperature are appropriate to reduce the economic risk to the level of the year 1980. The efficiency of other adaptation measures to reduce heat stress is distinctly lower. The results in this study can support the decision making of farmers concerning adaptation management and investments. It can inform agricultural policy design as well as technological development.


Author(s):  
Rikito Hisamatsu ◽  
Rikito Hisamatsu ◽  
Kei Horie ◽  
Kei Horie

Container yards tend to be located along waterfronts that are exposed to high risk of storm surges. However, risk assessment tools such as vulnerability functions and risk maps for containers have not been sufficiently developed. In addition, damage due to storm surges is expected to increase owing to global warming. This paper aims to assess storm surge impact due to global warming for containers located at three major bays in Japan. First, we developed vulnerability functions for containers against storm surges using an engineering approach. Second, we simulated storm surges at three major bays using the SuWAT model and taking global warming into account. Finally, we developed storm surge risk maps for containers based on current and future situations using the vulnerability function and simulated inundation depth. As a result, we revealed the impact of global warming on storm surge risks for containers quantitatively.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Masayoshi Ishii ◽  
Nobuhito Mori

Abstract A large-ensemble climate simulation database, which is known as the database for policy decision-making for future climate changes (d4PDF), was designed for climate change risk assessments. Since the completion of the first set of climate simulations in 2015, the database has been growing continuously. It contains the results of ensemble simulations conducted over a total of thousands years respectively for past and future climates using high-resolution global (60 km horizontal mesh) and regional (20 km mesh) atmospheric models. Several sets of future climate simulations are available, in which global mean surface air temperatures are forced to be higher by 4 K, 2 K, and 1.5 K relative to preindustrial levels. Nonwarming past climate simulations are incorporated in d4PDF along with the past climate simulations. The total data volume is approximately 2 petabytes. The atmospheric models satisfactorily simulate the past climate in terms of climatology, natural variations, and extreme events such as heavy precipitation and tropical cyclones. In addition, data users can obtain statistically significant changes in mean states or weather and climate extremes of interest between the past and future climates via a simple arithmetic computation without any statistical assumptions. The database is helpful in understanding future changes in climate states and in attributing past climate events to global warming. Impact assessment studies for climate changes have concurrently been performed in various research areas such as natural hazard, hydrology, civil engineering, agriculture, health, and insurance. The database has now become essential for promoting climate and risk assessment studies and for devising climate adaptation policies. Moreover, it has helped in establishing an interdisciplinary research community on global warming across Japan.


Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1021
Author(s):  
Veerasamy Sejian ◽  
Mullakkalparambil V. Silpa ◽  
Mini R. Reshma Nair ◽  
Chinnasamy Devaraj ◽  
Govindan Krishnan ◽  
...  

This review attempted to collate and synthesize information on goat welfare and production constraints during heat stress exposure. Among the farm animals, goats arguably are considered the best-suited animals to survive in tropical climates. Heat stress was found to negatively influence growth, milk and meat production and compromised the immune response, thereby significantly reducing goats’ welfare under extensive conditions and transportation. Although considered extremely adapted to tropical climates, their production can be compromised to cope with heat stress. Therefore, information on goat adaptation and production performance during heat exposure could help assess their welfare. Such information would be valuable as the farming communities are often struggling in their efforts to assess animal welfare, especially in tropical regions. Broadly three aspects must be considered to ensure appropriate welfare in goats, and these include (i) housing and environment; (ii) breeding and genetics and (iii) handling and transport. Apart from these, there are a few other negative welfare factors in goat rearing, which differ across the production system being followed. Such negative practices are predominant in extensive systems and include nutritional stress, limited supply of good quality water, climatic extremes, parasitic infestation and lameness, culminating in low production, reproduction and high mortality rates. Broadly two types of methodologies are available to assess welfare in goats in these systems: (i) animal-based measures include behavioral measurements, health and production records and disease symptoms; (ii) resources based and management-based measures include stocking density, manpower, housing conditions and health plans. Goat welfare could be assessed based on several indicators covering behavioral, physical, physiological and productive responses. The important indicators of goat welfare include agonistic behavior, vocalization, skin temperature, body condition score (BCS), hair coat conditions, rectal temperature, respiration rate, heart rate, sweating, reduced growth, reduced milk production and reduced reproductive efficiency. There are also different approaches available by which the welfare of goats could be assessed, such as naturalistic, functional and subjective approaches. Thus, assessing welfare in goats at every production stage is a prerequisite for ensuring appropriate production in this all-important species to guarantee optimum returns to the marginal and subsistence farmers.


2014 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 16-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Arjoon ◽  
Yasir Mohamed ◽  
Quentin Goor ◽  
Amaury Tilmant

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 616-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irshad Ahmad Para ◽  
Parvez Ahmad Dar ◽  
Bilal Ahmad Malla ◽  
Meeti Punetha ◽  
Ankita Rautela ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

Animals ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pratap Pragna ◽  
Surinder S. Chauhan ◽  
Veerasamy Sejian ◽  
Brian J. Leury ◽  
Frank R. Dunshea

The ability of an animal to cope and adapt itself to the changing climate virtually depends on the function of rumen and rumen inhabitants such as bacteria, protozoa, fungi, virus and archaea. Elevated ambient temperature during the summer months can have a significant influence on the basic physiology of the rumen, thereby affecting the nutritional status of the animals. Rumen volatile fatty acid (VFA) production decreases under conditions of extreme heat. Growing recent evidence suggests there are genetic variations among breeds of goats in the impact of heat stress on rumen fermentation pattern and VFA production. Most of the effects of heat stress on rumen fermentation and enteric methane (CH4) emission are attributed to differences in the rumen microbial population. Heat stress-induced rumen function impairment is mainly associated with an increase in Streptococcus genus bacteria and with a decrease in the bacteria of Fibrobactor genus. Apart from its major role in global warming and greenhouse effect, enteric CH4 is also considered as a dietary energy loss in goats. These effects warrant mitigating against CH4 production to ensure optimum economic return from goat farming as well as to reduce the impact on global warming as CH4 is one of the more potent greenhouse gases (GHG). The various strategies that can be implemented to mitigate enteric CH4 emission include nutritional interventions, different management strategies and applying advanced biotechnological tools to find solution to reduce CH4 production. Through these advanced technologies, it is possible to identify genetically superior animals with less CH4 production per unit feed intake. These efforts can help the farming community to sustain goat production in the changing climate scenario.


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