Abstract
Simple SummaryIdentifying the damage caused by extreme weather events due to the climate change phenomena to formulate targeted coping strategies and policies is an issue that concerns all economics sectors. To date, the impact of flooding events on agriculture, particularly livestock, has been minimally investigated. For this reason, this study seeks to identify flood damage to livestock production, focusing in particular on dairy cattle farms. In fact, the herd is the main source of income for dairy farmers and the impact of flood on dairy farm can lead to several problems that can seriously undermine dairy cattle welfare and consequently the production outcome after a flood event. Therefore, this study identified and quantified the flood damage that may affect dairy herds, as reported in the literature. This study might help the development of a strategy able to assess direct damages to livestock welfare caused by flood events, provide advantages for farm management and contribute to farm resilience after a natural disaster.For the economic sectors, the need to address the challenges posed by natural disasters due to climate change is an outstanding issue. To date, according to the European Commission (2019), there is still a gap in the estimation of the costs of flood in all European countries and the direct impact that these floods have on agricultural activities. More specifically, the damage to livestock has been minimally studied. The aim of this study is is therefore to identify the flood damage that affects dairy cattle farms, focusing on the damage to herds caused by a flood event; in fact, poor welfare conditions of dairy cattle directly affect production and thus farm revenue. To accomplish the aim of this study, a framework was first developed to identify possible damage types. Then, scientific literature focusing on the identification of flood damage to dairy herds was reviewed, and to quantify this damage to herds, literature sources providing information on the magnitude of variation in the identified damage types were used. Thus, our results provide relevant information on the variables that should be taken into account when assessing of the direct damage affecting the overall welfare of a dairy herd after a flood event. This evidence could then contribute to the development of tools aimed at assessing damage to dairy cattle on flood-affected farms.
Highlights
The debate on climate change has raised several concerns related to the damage caused by natural disasters, which influence the development of human society [1]
According to Merz et al (2010) [10], this finding can probably be related to the fact that the economic damage from floods to the agricultural sector is considered lower than that to other economic sectors in urban areas
Farmers consider the adoption of insurance policies too expensive to protect against losses of capital, production, machinery and plants in the case of natural calamities, such as flood events [40]
Summary
The debate on climate change has raised several concerns related to the damage caused by natural disasters, which influence the development of human society [1]. Between 1995 and 2015, flood events accounted for 47% of all weatherrelated disasters and caused approximately 25% of the total economic damage due to natural disasters [3]. In European countries, between 2010 and 2016, at least 128 damaging flood events occurred, and almost half were registered in only four countries, namely Italy (22%), France (12%), Spain (1%) and Germany (9%) [4]. Paprotny et al (2018) [4] show that flood events are increasingly small in terms of severity, their increasing occurrence causes more damage over longer periods
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
