Climate Change and Lithuania’s Livestock Farms: Awareness and Reactions, an Explorative Study

Abstract

Climate change is a global issue widely recognized by the European population. Researchers generally acknowledge that the agricultural sector contributes significantly to climate change. The livestock sector produces about two thirds of the total Greenhouse gasses emissions (GHG) generated from all farm production processes. On the other hand, climate change affects agriculture and zootechny in multiple ways. There is abundant literature on the measures that could be adopted by the farmers to mitigate the climate change effects and adapt their activity to the changes. Nonetheless, these studies focus predominantly on Africa and Asia, and fewer studies involve Europe and Nordic areas. This study aims at analyzing livestock holders’ perception of climate change, verifying whether and why they adopt mitigation and/or adaptation techniques, and identifying the limitations that delay the spread of these measures. For this purpose, a survey was conducted among a livestock holdings sample in Lithuania. The findings have suggested that the holders with a small number of animals, situated in the regions where livestock production is not very economically advanced, have difficulties in adopting the climate-change-related measures because they do not have sufficient funds to implement them and are not aware of the possibilities for such measures.