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

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180亿加元，并在全国创造228，000个就业机会。为了实现这一令人印象深刻的经济业绩，加拿大牛肉产业依赖于主要集中在草原省份的生产系统，其中包括草原作为其主要饲料来源。随着全球对畜产品的需求不断上升，加拿大牛肉产业将需要更多的草原面积，以便增加产量来满足这一需求。然而，由于土地利用和气候变化，加拿大草原饲料供应的增加是不确定的。拟议的计划旨在评估当前和未来的饲料供应从草原牛肉生产在加拿大大草原，考虑到环境，气候，土地利用和管理实践之间的相互作用。该计划还将提出战略，通过实地监测和计算机建模方法相结合，提高草地生产力，促进牛肉产业的可持续性。将利用20米分辨率的卫星图像加上有针对性的生物量取样制作草地覆盖率和生物量生产率图。这些地图将用于校准水土评估工具模型，该模型将用于模拟当前和未来土地使用和气候条件下的生物量生产力。该计划的新方面包括考虑管理实践，可以通过增加生物质生产力和旨在增加动物蛋白质生产的政府计划的影响，如马尼托巴蛋白质优势战略，潜在地增加草原的经济回报。该计划的成果将促进对区域尺度上草地系统生产力的科学认识，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，并量化自然地理（即，农业土壤适宜性），经济（即，商品价格）和政策（即，政府计划）对饲料可用性的驱动。这项研究还将支持以科学为基础的政策制定，因为它在区域范围内综合了农业经济和环境方面的观点。最后，这项研究将支持牛肉产业的风险评估，这是一个重要的农业商品在加拿大和草原代表的生产系统的一个关键组成部分。该计划还将促进研究生和本科生在尖端建模方法，大数据处理和集成技术以及区域范围内复杂问题分析方面的培训。这样的一套技能是非常可取的学术和非学术职业道路，因为我们进入一个以科学为基础的范式，批判性思维和分析技能是至关重要的。

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.