Beef production in the Canadian Prairies: Prospects of feed availability under climate and land use change

加拿大大草原的牛肉生产：气候和土地利用变化下饲料供应的前景

• 批准号: RGPIN-2021-03337
• 负责人: CunhaCordeiro, Marcos
• 金额: $ 1.82万
• 依托单位: University of Manitoba
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=743575
• 关键词: Beef; production; Canadian; Prairies; Prospects

The beef industry is of strategic importance for the Canadian economy, contributing $18 billion annually to the Canadian gross domestic product, and generating 228,000 jobs nationally. To achieve this impressive economic performance, the Canadian beef industry relies on a production system mostly concentrated in the prairie provinces that includes grasslands as its major feed source. As the global demand for livestock products continues to rise, the Canadian beef industry will need more grassland areas in order to increase production to meet this demand. However, an increased feed availability from grasslands in Canada is uncertain due to land use and climate changes. The proposed program aims at assessing current and future feed availability from grasslands for beef production in the Canadian Prairies, taking into consideration the interaction amongst environment, climate, land use, and management practices. The program will also propose strategies to improve grassland productivity and promote the sustainability of the beef industry through a combination of field monitoring and computer modelling approaches. Grassland coverage and biomass productivity maps will be generated from 20-m resolution satellite imagery coupled with targeted biomass sampling. These maps will be used to calibrate the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, which will be used to simulate biomass productivity under current and future land use and climate conditions. Novel aspects of this program include the consideration given to management practices that can potentially increase the economic return of grasslands by increasing biomass productivity and the impact of government programs aimed at increasing animal protein production, such as Manitoba Protein Advantage Strategy. The outcomes of this program will advance scientific knowledge on the productivity of grassland systems at a regional scale, reveal important interactions among grassland dynamics and its vulnerability to climate and land use change, and quantify the impact of physiographic (i.e., agricultural soil suitability), economic (i.e., commodity prices), and policy (i.e., government programs) drivers on feed availability. This research will also support science--based policy development, as it integrates the agronomic and environmental perspectives at the regional scale. Finally, this research will support risk assessments of the beef industry, which is an important agricultural commodity in Canada and for which grasslands represent a critical component of the production system. This program will also promote training of graduate and undergraduate students in cutting--edge modelling methods, big data processing and integration techniques, and analysis of complex issues at regional scales. Such a skill set is highly desirable for both academic and non--academic career paths, as we move into a science--based paradigm where critical thinking and analytical skills are crucial.

牛肉产业对加拿大经济具有战略重要性，每年为加拿大国内生产总值贡献180亿美元，并在全国创造22.8万个就业机会。为了实现这一令人印象深刻的经济表现，加拿大牛肉行业依赖于主要集中在草原省份的生产体系，该体系包括草原作为其主要饲料来源。随着全球对畜产品的需求持续上升，加拿大牛肉产业将需要更多的草原面积，以增加产量来满足这一需求。然而，由于土地利用和气候变化，加拿大草原增加的饲料供应是不确定的。拟议的计划旨在评估加拿大草原牛肉生产目前和未来的饲料供应情况，考虑到环境、气候、土地利用和管理实践之间的相互作用。该计划还将提出通过田间监测和计算机建模相结合的方法来提高草原生产力和促进牛肉产业可持续发展的战略。草原复盖率和生物量生产力地图将由20米分辨率的卫星图像结合有针对性的生物量采样生成。这些地图将用于校准土壤和水资源评估工具(SWAT)模型，该模型将用于模拟当前和未来土地利用和气候条件下的生物质生产力。该计划的创新方面包括考虑管理实践，通过提高生物质生产率来潜在地增加草原的经济回报，以及旨在增加动物蛋白生产的政府计划的影响，如马尼托巴省蛋白质优势战略。该项目的成果将促进区域范围内草地系统生产力的科学知识，揭示草地动态及其对气候和土地利用变化的脆弱性之间的重要相互作用，并量化地形(即农业土壤适宜性)、经济(即商品价格)和政策(即政府项目)驱动因素对饲料供应的影响。这项研究还将支持以科学为基础的政策制定，因为它综合了区域范围内的农学和环境观点。最后，这项研究将支持对牛肉行业的风险评估，这是加拿大的一种重要农产品，草原是生产系统的关键组成部分。该项目还将促进对研究生和本科生进行尖端建模方法、大数据处理和集成技术以及在区域范围内分析复杂问题的培训。随着我们进入以科学为基础的范式，批判性思维和分析技能至关重要，这样的技能集对于学术和非学术职业道路都是非常可取的。