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Will heat stress take its toll on milk production in China?

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Abstract

There are clear signs that milk production growth is leveling off, and recently even declining, in China. Heat stress is one of the main reasons for the recent reduction in milk production. In this study, we computed the change in milk production as a result of heat stress in major milk production areas in China. We constructed a temperature–humidity index (THI) spatial layer to understand the monthly distribution of heat and moisture. We documented specific areas in northern China where cattle were at high risk to heat stress in specific months. THI values exceeded the threshold above which milk production declines during months of June, July, and August. Especially during July, the THI value was higher than the production threshold in recent years (2008 to 2016) and in projected future scenarios (2050 and 2070). THI-based milk yield losses were up from 0.7 to about 4 kg per cow per day in July 2016. These losses are projected to increase from 1.5 to 6.5 kg in 2050 and 2 to 7.2 kg in 2070 (representing production losses between 15 and 50%). These results suggest that climate change will have significant consequences for the dairy sector in major milk-producing areas in China. Our results are useful in identifying areas susceptible to heat stress where adaptive livestock management practices are needed to prevent significant production decreases.

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Acknowledgments

The research was financially supported by Dairy census program by the Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, National Natural Science Foundation of China (31872383), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFD0501600), and Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (ASTIP-IAS07; CAAS-XTCX2016011-01), Beijing Dairy Industry Innovation Team (BAIC06-2020). We would like to acknowledge Dr. Eike Luedeling for providing comments on the early draft of the manuscript that help us to revise the analysis and sincere thanks to Austin G Smith for English editing.

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Author notes

  1. Sailesh Ranjitkar and Dengpan Bu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Animal Nutrition, Institute of Animal Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China

    Sailesh Ranjitkar, Dengpan Bu, Ying Ma, Lu Ma & Lianshen Zhao

  2. CAS Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650201, Yunnan, China

    Sailesh Ranjitkar & Jianchu Xu

  3. CAAS-ICRAF Joint Lab on Agroforestry and Sustainable Animal Husbandry, Beijing, China

    Sailesh Ranjitkar, Dengpan Bu, Lu Ma, Lianshen Zhao & Jianchu Xu

  4. East and Central Asia Regional Office, World Agroforestry, Kunming, China

    Sailesh Ranjitkar & Jianchu Xu

  5. Centre for Mountain Futures (CMF), Kunming Institute of Botany, Kunming, 650201, Yunnan, China

    Sailesh Ranjitkar & Jianchu Xu

  6. Hunan Co-Innovation Center of Animal Production Safety, Changsha, Hunan, China

    Dengpan Bu

  7. International Livestock Research Institute, ILRI, Nairobi, 30709, Kenya

    Mark Van Wijk

  8. National Animal Husbandry Services, Beijing, China

    Jianmin Shi & Chousheng Liu

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  1. Sailesh Ranjitkar
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Correspondence to Jianchu Xu.

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Ranjitkar, S., Bu, D., Van Wijk, M. et al. Will heat stress take its toll on milk production in China?. Climatic Change 161, 637–652 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02688-4

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