Climate change is rapidly redrawing the map of livestock production, but a global analysis suggests that the most urgent challenge is no longer simply discovering how animals, farms, and ecosystems are affected. It is turning scientific knowledge into solutions that farmers can actually use. Researchers from the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture at the University of São Paulo (ESALQ-USP) reached that conclusion after examining nearly five decades of research on animal production under climate change. Their study, published in Tropical Animal Health and Production, analyzed 1,694 scientific articles indexed in the Scopus database between 1974 and 2025. The results reveal a field expanding rapidly in both volume and complexity, while also exposing a persistent gap between sophisticated research and practical implementation. That gap could determine whether livestock systems become more resilient—or increasingly vulnerable—as temperatures rise, rainfall patterns shift, and extreme weather events become more frequent.
The number of studies addressing climate change and animal production grew at an average annual rate of 9.5 percent over the period analyzed. More than one-third of the publications, 35.71 percent, resulted from collaboration between researchers, institutions, or countries, reflecting the increasingly international and interdisciplinary nature of the subject. The research landscape has also changed substantially since the early decades of climate-related livestock studies. Earlier work often concentrated on clearly defined physiological problems, such as heat stress, which occurs when an animal’s heat production exceeds its ability to lose heat to the surrounding environment. Contemporary research is more likely to investigate adaptation, resilience, sustainability, animal welfare, food security, and One Health. Scientists are also using computational modeling, large databases, remote sensing, and machine-learning methods to project how herds may respond to future conditions. Yet the authors caution that more advanced methods do not automatically produce better outcomes if the knowledge remains inaccessible to producers or disconnected from regional realities.
“After 2015, the discussion became more focused on resilience, sustainability, animal welfare, and One Health,” says Iran José Oliveira da Silva, a professor in ESALQ-USP’s Department of Biosystems Engineering and one of the study’s coordinators. He links this shift partly to the United Nations 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, which encouraged researchers to treat livestock production as part of a wider environmental and social system. In this view, climate change is not merely a question of whether animals can survive higher temperatures. It also involves whether farms can maintain productivity, protect animal health, reduce emissions, preserve water resources, and remain economically viable. “It isn’t enough to simply develop technology,” Silva explains. “We have to transform it into evidence-based practices and implementation.” That transformation requires policies, extension services, infrastructure, financing, and access to innovations for small-scale producers, who often face the greatest climate risks while having the fewest resources to respond.
The study’s first author, animal scientist Robson Mateus Freitas Silveira, says the literature review indicates that the discipline remains in an early stage, with substantial room for new questions, methods, and research agendas. One of the clearest developments is the movement from isolated measurements of climate stress toward integrated assessments of animal resilience. Resilience refers to the ability of an animal or production system to withstand disturbance, recover from it, and continue functioning under altered conditions. During his doctoral research, Silveira developed a methodology to project how herds from different livestock species could respond physiologically to climate-change impacts between 2050 and 2100. Such projections can incorporate variables including air temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind speed, animal physiology, housing, genetics, nutrition, and management. By connecting these factors, researchers can estimate changes in heat load, feed intake, reproduction, growth, disease risk, and mortality under different climate scenarios. The challenge is ensuring that these models accurately represent the conditions experienced by farmers in particular regions.
The analysis found that some areas of research are already well established. Greenhouse-gas emissions, environmental impacts, and the relationship between livestock and climate change have generated a substantial body of evidence. Livestock production contributes to global warming through methane released during ruminant digestion, nitrous oxide associated with manure and fertilized soils, and carbon dioxide linked to land-use change, energy consumption, and supply chains. At the same time, animal agriculture is affected by warming through reduced pasture quality, water shortages, altered disease patterns, and declining reproductive performance during heat waves. Other themes, however, remain less connected to applied research and public policy. These include climate-smart agriculture, One Health, and integrated sustainability frameworks. Climate-smart agriculture seeks to increase productivity and resilience while reducing or avoiding greenhouse-gas emissions, using strategies that can encompass livestock, crops, forests, fisheries, and entire landscapes. The researchers argue that such approaches need to move beyond conceptual discussion and be tested through locally grounded programs.
One Health provides another framework for linking livestock production to broader environmental and public-health concerns. The concept recognizes that human health, animal health, and ecosystem health are interdependent. Climate change can intensify those connections by expanding the geographic range of disease vectors, changing the distribution of pathogens, increasing the risk of zoonotic spillover, and influencing the use of antibiotics in stressed or disease-prone herds. Warmer conditions may also alter the persistence of microorganisms in water and soil. At the same time, pressure to maintain production under difficult conditions can encourage management decisions with unintended consequences for welfare or antimicrobial resistance. A One Health approach therefore requires collaboration among veterinarians, animal scientists, ecologists, epidemiologists, public-health specialists, climate researchers, economists, and farmers. According to the Brazilian researchers, the growing appearance of these concepts in the scientific literature is promising, but their practical integration remains limited. The next stage of research must connect environmental indicators with animal outcomes, farm economics, social conditions, and public policy.
The stakes extend far beyond individual farms. The global agri-food system is responsible for approximately one-third of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, while livestock production is a major source of methane. Agriculture also consumes large quantities of freshwater, particularly through irrigation, and expanding demand for food can intensify pressure on forests, grasslands, and other ecosystems. The United Nations projects that the world population could approach 10 billion by 2050, increasing demand for food even as climate change threatens the reliability of production. Land conversion for pasture or cropland can release stored carbon and reduce biodiversity, creating a feedback loop in which food production contributes to the environmental changes that make production more difficult. Livestock systems differ enormously, however. A smallholder farm in sub-Saharan Africa, a pasture-based operation in Brazil, and an intensive poultry facility in Europe face different climates, markets, diseases, technologies, and regulatory environments. A single global solution is therefore unlikely to work equally well everywhere.
That is why the authors emphasize regionalized and inclusive research. Global datasets can identify broad patterns, but they may conceal crucial differences in local soils, breeds, feed resources, housing designs, water availability, labor, income, and cultural practices. Applying a climate model developed for one region to another without suitable calibration can produce misleading predictions. “Using global databases and applying them to a specific region may not reflect the reality of that country or area,” Silva says. “When we work with regionalized information, we begin to be more precise.” The researchers recommend working directly with smallholder farmers and other producers to identify feasible interventions, measure their performance, and adapt them to local conditions. Solutions might include heat-tolerant genetics, improved shade and ventilation, revised feeding schedules, water-saving systems, disease surveillance, pasture diversification, precision livestock technologies, and changes in stocking density. Their effectiveness will depend not only on biology, but also on affordability, training, infrastructure, and access to markets.
The uneven adoption of climate-related innovations is especially visible in vulnerable countries. Although the scientific literature increasingly proposes technological, genetic, and management-based responses, structural, economic, and institutional barriers prevent many producers from adopting them. Farmers may lack credit to improve animal housing, reliable electricity for cooling systems, veterinary services, digital connectivity, or insurance against climate losses. Technologies developed for high-income settings may be too expensive or too complex for small farms, while breeding programs may overlook locally adapted animals that already possess valuable resistance to heat, drought, or disease. The researchers also identify geographic disparities in scientific output, with countries in the Global South—particularly in Africa—underrepresented in the literature. This imbalance can make global assessments less representative and limit the development of solutions based on local knowledge. Inclusive research, they argue, should not treat producers merely as end users. Farmers should help define research questions, evaluate technologies, and shape policies intended to support climate adaptation.
The Brazilian team is now extending this agenda through research on the projected effects of climate change on poultry and swine production in different regions of Brazil, including the Midwest and Northeast, through the year 2100. Unlike ruminants, poultry and pigs do not produce methane through enteric fermentation, but they are highly sensitive to heat stress because their physiology limits their ability to dissipate body heat. Elevated temperatures can reduce feed intake, slow growth, impair fertility, weaken immune responses, and increase mortality. In intensive systems, heat can also raise energy consumption for ventilation and cooling, potentially increasing production costs and emissions. By combining regional climate projections with animal physiology, genetics, housing, nutrition, and management data, the researchers hope to identify strategies suited to different future scenarios. Their broader message is that the future of livestock science will be measured not only by the number of papers published or the sophistication of the models used, but by whether evidence reaches farms, informs policy, protects animal welfare, and helps communities produce food without exceeding ecological limits.
Subject of Research: Livestock production, climate change, sustainability, animal welfare, climate adaptation, resilience, One Health, and climate-smart agriculture.
Article Title: Animal production under climate change: a global scientometric analysis of research structure, thematic evolution, and knowledge gaps
News Publication Date: 28-May-2026
Web References: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-026-05071-0
References: Tropical Animal Health and Production; São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP); University of São Paulo Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ-USP)
Image Credits: Léo Ramos Chaves/Pesquisa FAPESP
Keywords: Livestock; climate change; animal production; climate-smart agriculture; One Health; sustainability; resilience; animal welfare; greenhouse-gas emissions; scientific communication
