This summary was prepared by Hamed Kioumarsi, EBM at Springer Nature, in collaboration with Maiko Roberto Tavares Dantas (Universidade Federal do Semi-Árido, Brazil) and Mehdi Farzpourmachiani (Technofest Institute of Technology University, Belgium).
Citation: Kioumarsi, H., Roberto Tavares Dantas, M., & Farzpourmachiani, M. (2026). The Climate–Animal Production Nexus: Mechanisms, Vulnerabilities, Adaptation, and Future Research Priorities. Springer Nature Communities. https://go.nature.com/3VDpU2a
Introduction
Animal science has played a key role in the way humans have interacted with animals within our societies by affecting society's food security and nutrition, livelihoods, development, and sporting activities. Nevertheless, there is the need to consider how animal production relates to climate change and environmental sustainability. Livestock systems have been affected by changes in climatic conditions while also being one of the causes of greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate change has become a more pressing issue when it comes to livestock production. Changes in temperature, rain, drought, and weather have created new environmental conditions for raising livestock. In addition, livestock systems play a role in climate change because of greenhouse gas emissions from them. It is thus important to understand the relationship between climate and animal production.
How Climate Change Affects Animal Production
One of the direct impacts of climate change on animal production is heat stress. Animals keep their body temperature within a certain physiological range; however, as soon as this range is disrupted due to increasing temperatures, animals start making certain physiological and behavioral changes in order to protect themselves from temperature stress. As a result of temperature stress, livestock may suffer from decreased appetite, alterations in endocrine functions and metabolism, increased respiration rates, reduced immune system functions, and reduced growth, altered meat quality, reduced milk yield, and impaired reproductive performance.
Temperature stress is especially critical when it comes to dairy cattle as temperature stress causes reduced feed intake and milk yield. However, it is not specific to only one particular species and has an impact on many different livestock types. For instance, poultry are quite sensitive to temperature changes because they do not have a sweat mechanism, and pigs may experience substantial thermal stress because of their limited capacity for evaporative heat loss through sweating. Sheep and goats as well as indigenous breeds may be more tolerant to tough environmental conditions; however, extreme temperatures may still influence their productivity.
There are other indirect impacts that climate change brings to animal production. For instance, drought and precipitation change affect the quantity and quality of pastures, whereas increased carbon dioxide levels, changing of seasons, and extreme weather conditions affect the nutritive value of feeds. Lack of water, either through limited access to water or poor quality water, limits feed consumption and physiological functions and increases heat stress.
Vulnerability Across Production Systems
The vulnerability of production systems to climate change can vary widely. Intensive production systems may offer possibilities for manipulating the environment via ventilation, cooling equipment, better housing, and precise monitoring. These systems, however, are expensive in terms of financial input, energy consumption, and technical facilities. Smallholder and extensive production systems, especially in tropical and subtropical areas, will not always have enough resources to develop appropriate adaptation strategies.
Genetics is another factor that determines the vulnerability of the population. Local breeds may have beneficial traits related to heat resistance, resistance to parasites, feed deficiency, and other environmental problems. In turn, breeds with high productivity may have a higher sensitivity to climatic changes because of their high metabolism, which results in more heat production. Breeding work should be aimed at combining productivity and climatic resilience, but focusing on maximum productivity may lead to increased vulnerability of the animals to climatic factors in the future.
Climate change will also affect the spread of animal diseases. The alteration of temperature, humidity, rainfall, and vectors will impact on the geographic distribution and timing of infectious and parasitic diseases. In terms of evaluating the susceptibility of animals to climate change, apart from production losses, the health and welfare of animals, disease prevention, and food safety must also be taken into account.
Adaptation: From Emergency Responses to Resilient Systems
Adaptation needs a range of interventions from immediate farm-level interventions to long-term genetic and technological interventions. On a farm level, simple and manageable intervention techniques can make quite a difference. Creating shades, providing proper ventilation, ensuring availability of clean water, modifying feeding times, lowering stocking density during the extremely hot weather period and cooling systems are among some of the techniques that can mitigate the effects of heat stress.
Adaptation can also be achieved through nutritional intervention. Formulating diets in such a way that there is proper nutrient intake despite the low feed intake due to the thermal stress is one among them. Better quality forage, locally available feed resources and proper feed additives can help in achieving productivity while potentially reducing environmental impacts.
Genetic enhancement forms a long-term climate adaptation strategy. Modern breeding programs can increasingly embrace traits such as heat tolerance, disease resistance, feed efficiency, and overall robustness in addition to productive traits. Genomics can speed up the process of identifying animals that have the ability to perform well under climatic conditions. The preservation of local breeds of livestock is one important strategy for adapting to climate change since genetic diversity can provide vital resources for dealing with future climatic conditions.
Technological advancement can help adapt livestock production to climate change. Precision livestock farming technologies can allow for continuous monitoring of physiological variables such as body temperature, respiration rate, level of activity, feed intake, and behavior. Combining information on environment and animals can help design warning systems that would detect potential heat stress or other climatic threats at an early stage. However, the application of such technologies by small-scale farmers will need to be considered.
Mitigation and the Two-Way Nexus
Neither adaptation nor mitigation alone can adequately address the nexus between climate change and livestock production since, besides adapting to the effects of climate change, livestock production needs to be adapted to reduce its effects on climate. Improved feed efficiency will be one of the most important strategies since more productive animals tend to consume less feed to produce the same amount of animal products. In fact, improved feed efficiency can reduce greenhouse-gas emissions per unit of milk, meat, or other animal products. Interventions aimed at reducing enteric methane production, such as nutrition improvement, improved forage quality, enhanced animal health, and genetic selection, may be effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from ruminants.
Manure management, sustainable grazing, water use efficiency, renewable energy use, and integrated crop-livestock production may also contribute to the reduction of environmental impacts of animal agriculture. The importance of taking into consideration both mitigation and adaptation is also crucial; otherwise, any strategy aimed at mitigation and leading to increased exposure to heat stress, diseases, or nutritional deficiencies is not a sustainable solution.
Future Research Priorities
Some key areas where future research efforts should be focused include:
Firstly, region-specific research to gain insight into the potential response of various breeds, species, and production systems to climate projections. Secondly, current research should move from studying the negative impacts on the productivity of animals to resilience.
Also, future research should adopt a multi-disciplinary approach and consider the interactions between animal genetics, nutrition, physiology, microbiology, environmental science, economics, and social sciences. Multi-omics technologies can help explore the molecular and biological processes responsible for heat tolerance, disease resistance, and environmental resilience. Digitalization and artificial intelligence are also helpful in the prediction and mitigation of climate challenges such as heat stress, diseases, feed shortages, etc.
Feasibility of the adaptation intervention is another critical aspect that needs to be considered. An efficient adaptation strategy may be of little use if the implementation of the strategy requires economic resources that farmers do not have. Thus, research should account for the farmer decision-making, local knowledge, availability of labor and infrastructure, gender issues, markets, and policies.
Conclusion
Climate-animal production relationship constitutes one of the most significant challenges in terms of the future development of food systems in the world. Climate change may negatively affect the health and well-being, reproduction, feed resources and productivity of animals, whereas the livestock production impacts the generation of greenhouse gases and environmental change. Addressing this bidirectional relationship requires a shift from reactive responses to proactive and integrated actions aimed at climate resilience.
The future development of livestock systems should ensure high heat resistance, efficiency, technological capacity, genetic diversity, and sustainability of production. To achieve this outcome, adaptation and mitigation should go hand in hand rather than being treated as competing approaches. Above all else, the climate-resilient livestock production should put emphasis on the animals as the main component of production and ensure their health and well-being along with the food production and environment protection.
An integrated approach which will link the animal biology, environmental sustainability, technologies, economics and policy can help to turn climate change into an opportunity to reconsider the livestock systems.
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