Irish farms under climate change – is there a regional variation on farm responses?

Abstract

The current paper aims to determine regional impacts of climate change on Irish farms examining the variation in farm responses. A set of crop growth models were used to determine crop and grass yields under a baseline scenario and a future climate scenario. These crop and grass yields were used along with farm-level data taken from the Irish National Farm Survey in an optimizing farm-level (farm-level linear programming) model, which maximizes farm profits under limiting resources. A change in farm net margins under the climate change scenario compared to the baseline scenario was taken as a measure to determine the effect of climate change on farms. The growth models suggested a decrease in cereal crop yields (up to 9%) but substantial increase in yields of forage maize (up to 97%) and grass (up to 56%) in all regions. Farms in the border, midlands and south-east regions suffered, whereas farms in all other regions generally fared better under the climate change scenario used in the current study. The results suggest that there is a regional variability between farms in their responses to the climate change scenario. Although substituting concentrate feed with grass feeds is the main adaptation on all livestock farms, the extent of such substitution differs between farms in different regions. For example, large dairy farms in the south-east region adopted total substitution of concentrate feed while similar dairy farms in the south-west region opted to replace only 0·30 of concentrate feed. Farms in most of the regions benefitted from increasing stocking rate, except for sheep farms in the border and dairy farms in the south-east regions. The tillage farms in the mid-east region responded to the climate change scenario by shifting arable production to beef production on farms.

Opportunities for Adaptation to Climate Change of Extensively Grazed Pastures in the Central Apennines (Italy)

“…In addition, although a down-regulation strategy can be useful to limit the effect of increased CO 2 concentration on plant growth [80], it is worth emphasizing that the production increases projected for the mid-future (2041-2070) resulted in being particularly high when compared with a baseline that reflects a situation of the near past (period 1981-2010). When compared, instead, with the ongoing period (2011-2040), which reflects average aboveground biomass values similar to the present and to the calibration period, the increases are smaller, comparable to those found in other studies [81,82]. The CO 2 positive effect is reflected in the higher C uptake estimated by PaSim as a result of increased productivity, also with higher stocking rates (i.e., higher C losses due to higher animal respiration), which confirms the increased worldwide productivity of grasslands exposed to increased CO 2 [83].…”

Analysis of the effect of alternative agri-environmental policy instruments on production performance and nitrogen surplus of representative dairy farms

“…The method of aggregation conforms to Day, (1963) aggregation criteria which maintained that aggregation bias is minimised when grouping is done on the basis of technological homogeneity, managerial ability, production level and institutional proportionality. A similar methodology has been employed by Shrestha et al (2014); Shrestha et al (2015); Groeneveld et al (2016).…”

Unpacking Total Factor Productivity on Dairy Farms Using Empirical Evidence

“…Univariate clustering was carried out using TFP to categorise farms into three groups, with the number of groups specified a priori. Studies, including Shrestha, et al [41] and Shrestha, et al [42], employed a similar approach to cluster Irish dairy farms with similar characteristics into groups. See Tan, Steinbach and Kumar [40] for a detailed description of this analytical approach.…”