Dairy farming in extreme weather events: farm response and resilience

We investigate to what extent Swedish dairy farmers are resilient to severe climatic shocks and the type of strategies or technologies put in place as a response to such shocks.

We develop a typology that is specific to dairy farmers’ response strategies to observe heterogeneity across dairy farms within the Swedish dairy sector.

The overall aim of this project is to examine how Swedish dairy farmers’ response to severe climatic shocks can be used to determine their resilience typologies and what specific factors are associated with dairy farms’ climate disaster resilience over time and geographical location. Existing data on farm and field-level data together with survey data will be used.

The project is interdisciplinary and combines insights and approaches from animal science, agricultural economics and econometrics.

The specific objectives are to (1) Identity response strategies implemented, and strategies that can be implemented, by dairy farmers and their efficiency to absorb severe climatic shocks, (2) Develop resilience typologies of dairy farms using information about their actual response strategies to absorb severe climatic shocks (3) Analyse the spatial and temporal trends of dairy farms’ climate disaster resilience.

Findings will be communicated through popular science articles, newsletters and scientific papers.