Climate change and its impact on milk production in India

Abstract

In the world today 7.08 billion people inhabit on the earth presently to feed everyone adequately the world needs 910.10 million tons of milk, against which global production is only 720.98 million tons. This discrepancy in need and production left over 868 million. People undernourished worldwide and 850 million people of them live in developing countries. Climate change poses a formidable challenge to the development of livestock sector in India. The anticipated rise in temperature between 2.3 and 4.8 °C over the entire country together with increased precipitation resulting from climate change is likely to aggravate the heat stress in dairy animals, particularly hybrid animals, adversely affecting their productive and reproductive performance, and hence reducing the total area where high yielding dairy cattle can be economically reared. Milk is an important component of food that is significantly increasing in demand. Increased heat stress associated with global climate change may, however, cause distress to dairy animals and possibly impact milk production. The Temperature- Humidity Index was used to relate animal stress with productivity of milk of buffaloes, crossbred, and local cows.