Impact of climate change on economic growth and development in Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country considered to be one of the most economically and socially developed countries in the world. Danes enjoy a high standard of living and the country ranks highly in education, health care, civil rights, democratic governance, prosperity, and human development. Denmark’s economy is large driven by the meat and dairy industries; the country has high meat and milk production.

Despite being located in the North, the country enjoys a mild climate with relatively high temperatures during spring and summer. Rainfall is evenly distributed across the year, and the soil is very fertile. All these factors make Denmark practically the ideal country for dairy production. The country’s climate and soil provide optimum conditions for dairy cattle farming. As a result dairy, cattle has been raised in Denmark for centuries, and milk, butter and cheese have formed a natural part of the Danish diet for just as long.

Because the Danish cows produce far more milk than they can consume in the domestic market, more than two-third of the total Danish milk production is exported as dairy products. This makes Denmark among the world’s top five dairy exporting nations. Exports of dairy products such as cheese, preserved milk products butter, account for more than one-fifth percent of all Danish agricultural exports. The exports are mostly to other EU countries.

Here we take a look at the impact of climate change on livestock production, the contribution of livestock production to climate change, and specific climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in the livestock sector. Livestock production will be limited by climate variability as animal water consumption is expected to increase substantially, demand for agricultural lands increase due to growth in animal production, and food security concern since about one-third of the global cereal harvest is used for livestock feed.

Farmers are on the front line in the battle with the effects of climate change directly affecting them. If the weather and the environment suffer they suffer, their businesses suffer and their families suffer.

Here’s how climate change has an impact on the dairy industry:

• Dairy cows have difficulties coping with extreme heat and increased temperatures often lead to lower milk yields, and higher susceptibility to diseases and other physical problems. So heat stress is one problem that might become a more critical issue for dairy farming in the future.
• As extreme weather events become more frequent, ensuring a constant supply of high quality food for dairy cows will become a concern, especially in droughts and flooding. Having lower yields of high-quality food due to extreme climatic events in the future, could result in serious problems in providing enough high quality feed for dairy cows and an increase in costs for the farmers having to buy in additional feed
• Climate change could potentially cause a problem for dairy cows, due to increase in diseases transmitted by insects. Insects require certain temperatures to grow and reproduce. As with many aspects of climate change, this could introduce livestock diseases that have so far not been present in the North. Viruses, parasitic worms and other harmful insects are expected to increase with warming temperatures.
• The production of milk requires a number of resources that might decrease in the future, such as fossil fuels, quality soils, and water. Large quantities of water are needed to produce milk during feed production, animal husbandry and the milking process. If water becomes a limited resource due to drought, milk production faces big problems.
• There are reports that suggest that some areas might benefit from climate change as it will enable the growth of crops such as tomatoes, olives and grapes, but that warmer temperatures will only be beneficial if fertile soils and water are available.

On the other hand, livestock is also responsible for climate change. Gases, a by-product of the dairy industry, heats up the atmosphere and contributes to climate change. These gases include direct emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from cows, and carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide from the likes of packaging, transportation and fertilisers.

Big dairy companies like Arla, the largest farming co-operative in Europe, are making improvements to their supply chain to off-set unavoidable emissions, they are trying to cut the amount of CO2 emissions from production and packaging.

Other steps that can be taken to reduce emissions include:

• Incorporate the manure better into the soil to reduce the loss of nitrogen.
• Produce more renewable energy on the farms using solar panels wind turbines, or biogas.
• Optimise feed production to reduce waste and reduce the amount of methane from the cows.

While the dairy firms are already adopting these measures, other smaller dairy farms need to be educated on the need to take steps to cut emissions. Like many other countries Denmark is also bearing the impact of climate change and environmental issues. Land and water pollution are two of Denmark’s most significant environmental issues, although much of the country’s household and industrial waste is now increasingly filtered and even recycled.

The country has historically taken a progressive stance on environmental preservation; the Danish Government was a signatory to the Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol. Denmark has made remarkable improvements in energy efficiency and reductions in CO2 emission levels. It has shown lot of improvement in sanitation, water resource management and health impacts of environmental issues, biodiversity and habitat. However, the country needs to pull up its socks in the areas of environmental effects of fisheries (rapidly declining fish stocks) and forest management.

Conclusion

Global demand for livestock products continues to rise, primarily due to improvement in the worldwide standard of living. Meanwhile, climate change is a threat to livestock production because of the impact on quality of feed crop, water and agricultural land availability, animal and milk production, livestock diseases, animal reproduction, and biodiversity. The livestock sector also contributes significantly to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, driving further climate change. In order to transition to sustainable livestock production, there is a need for frequent assessments to check the use of adaptation and mitigation measures for livestock production, and policies that support implementation of climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.

References

Danish Dairy Industry
https://agricultureandfood.dk/danish-agriculture-and-food/danish-dairy-industry

FARMING FOR THE FUTURE – TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DAIRY FARMING
https://www.arla.com/food-for-thought/sustainability/farming-for-the-future-towards-sustainable-dairy-farming/

Climate change: Pledge to cut emissions from dairy farms
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47499656

Climate change and livestock: Impacts, adaptation, and mitigation (Climate Risk Management Journal)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221209631730027X

References Denmark
https://www.climatechangepost.com/denmark/references/

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