Pramod Singh
Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra
Title: Impact of climate change on milk economy in India
Biography
Biography: Pramod Singh
Abstract
India has highest population of livestock and dependency of a large segment of Indian population for their livelihood security on livestock is very high. Climate change and variability is likely to affect livestock health, livestock feed and livestock productivity very severely.
This paper tries to project the future scenarios of temperature and heat waves using five climate models (ESM2M, HadGEM2-ES, IPSL-CM5A-LR, MIROC-ESM-CHEM and NorESM1-M) for the period of 2041-2070 (2050s) and 2071-2100 (2080s) across different RCPs. It tries to study the impacts of climate change and variability on general health and productivity of milk bearing animals. Based on Agro-ecological Zonation (Fischer, 2012)methodology, it also tries to project availability of feed during 2041-2070 (2050s) and 2071-2100 (2080s) for livestock.
Our findings reveal that there is likely to have decrease in milk production as a result of adverse health impacts due to rising temperature or heat waves incidences, decrease in milk productivity and shortage of animal feed. The paper suggests appropriate adaptation and mitigation pathways on various SSPs to sustain high level of milk production in India.