Search

Pastureland maintenance is seen as a land-based measure to reduce dependency on feed concentrates and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from livestock production in the EU, while providing other ecosystems services. This paper assesses potential market-mediated impacts, including global Land Use Change (LUC) and GHG emissions, from increased subsidies to pasture-based livestock production in the EU. A tax recycling strategy (TRS) is simulated against a baseline up to 2030 under the shared socioeconomic pathway 2 (SSP2). This implies a budget-neutral increase in the level of pasture subsidies in individual Member States, as land subsidies for other cropping activities decrease. We employ the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model GTAP in its recursive-dynamic version, GTAP-RDEM, extended with the Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) database FABIO to disaggregate agri-food sectors from 21 to 31. This approach allows considering price- and income-dependent feedbacks when assessing long-run changes in the global economy, improving the sectoral resolution relative to GTAP v10. The policy increases pastureland areas and cattle production in almost all EU Member States, whereas cropland and crop production decrease, causing significant changes across EU agri-food markets. Crop prices increase, leading to the reduced output of intensive animal production sectors, mainly pig and poultry. Cropland areas decrease and most EU countries increase imports of grain, oilseeds, and cakes, essentially soybean cake from Brazil and North America. While GHG emissions decrease in those EU countries where pasturelands expand mainly at the cost of croplands, GHG emissions increase in those countries where pastureland expansion comes with forest loss. As a result, net GHG emissions increase in the EU-27 in 2030 (+2.49 Mt CO 2 -eq). Emissions from LUC in major non-EU grain- and oilseed-exporting countries increase, e.g., by 102.52 Mt CO 2 -eq in Brazil and by 129.17 Mt CO 2 -eq in North America. The simulated policy shows that promoting extensive livestock per se does not meet the objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy and the EU Green Deal. The TRS should be complemented with policies to foster crop diversification and promote the use of domestic feed sources (e.g., legumes) to effectively ensure feed self-sufficiency and that extensive cattle production in the EU does not lead to deforestation in carbon-rich countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Bibliographic mapping was used to identify major research groups and trends for heat tolerance in farm animals. • Major research countries are the USA, China, Brazil, India, Australia and UK with 54% of all publications. • There was a gradual drift in heat stress studies from animal physiology towards genomics and cellular biology. • This area of research is growing 3x faster than publication rates in general. • Most papers are on cattle, indicating the need for studies with other species. This study looks at the bibliographic mapping of citation, co-occurrence of keywords, co-citation and bibliographic coupling for heat tolerance in farm animals. Data was obtained from Scopus (Elsevier) and analysed in Vosviewer. Several salient points emerge from our analysis. We found a total of 1728 documents from 102 countries, of which 54% are from six countries (USA, China, Brazil, India, Australia and UK). While heat tolerance is important, Global South countries have recently become more important in this topic. Nevertheless, researchers from this region appear relatively isolated using the metrics of this study. One potential factor contributing to isolation could be lack of funding. This is discussed in the light of current Article Processing Charges. We also note a gradual drift in heat stress studies from animal physiology towards genomics and cellular biology. The paper can help understanding tendencies in this field of research and may point to future actions within the research community. This paper also shows the need to strengthen studies in less favoured areas and with species such as small ruminants, whereby small holders may be harder hit by climate change. Biases in the analysis could arise due to low citations from recent papers or those not indexed in Scopus. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]