Abstract:
Climate change impacts are of serious concern in livestock production all over the
world. Scientists have come up with several adaptation techniques to apply for climate
resilient livestock production. The livestock farming requires adjustments in economic
and social systems to adapt to climate change and its impacts for its sustainability. The
climate resilient livestock production techniques that incur cost and the consequent
benefits are found limited in previous studies compared to crop production. Hence
this study was carried out to propose a conceptual model integrating cost incurring
adaptation techniques and subsequent benefits which will be helpful to analyze the
economics of livestock production under climate change in tropics. A detailed
literature review was carried out to identify the potential cost incurring adaptation
techniques for livestock production to thrive under climate change and their benefits.
According to the literature reviewed, major cost incurring adaptation techniques were
identified as adaptation to heat-stress, mitigation measures applied for drought
tolerance and variable precipitation, adaptation against pests and diseases and
adaptation for change in pasture and fodder production. The consequent benefits of
the implementation of the adaptation techniques were identified as higher level of
productivity under heat-stress, increased water use efficiency, improved animal
welfare, and increase in pasture and fodder availability. From the conceptual analysis,
it is concluded that the livestock farmers need to incur cost and obtain consequent
benefits while adopting for climate change. From this backdrop, current study
suggests that the available climate adaption techniques need to be investigated in
detail and associate real-time cost and benefit analysis should be performed using the
proposed conceptual model under local conditions to develop effective local policy
decisions.
