Potsdam: Climate Change will Cut Sheep, Goat and Cattle Farming in Half by 2100

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… by the end of the century, there may not be enough suitable areas for cows, sheep, and goats to graze …”

Climate Change Could Cut Land for Cattle, Sheep, and Goat Farming in Half by 2100

by Anastasiia Barmotina
March 3, 2026

As global temperatures rise, the vast grasslands that support billions of livestock and millions of people’s livelihoods are facing threats like never before. According to a recent Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) study, by the end of the century, there may not be enough suitable areas for cows, sheep, and goats to graze. This alarming projection underscored the urgency to address climate change to safeguard food security and vulnerable communities. 

The PIK study identifies the concept of a “safe climatic space” for cattle, sheep, and goat grazing. These systems, which cover about a third of Earth’s surface, rely on specific environmental conditions to thrive. Researchers defined this safe space based on ranges of key factors: temperatures between -3°C and 29°C, annual rainfall from 50 to 2,627 millimeters, humidity levels of 39% to 67%, and wind speeds of 1 to 6 meters per second. If the conditions don’t match, grasslands become less viable for sustaining large herds, leading to reduced productivity and potential ecosystem collapse. 

As stated in the study, climate change could result in a net decline of 36% to 50% in areas suitable for grazing by 2100. This contraction would affect up to 1.6 billion grazing animals worldwide, and put the livelihoods of more than 100 million pastoralists at risk. Grasslands represent the world’s largest agricultural production system, making their decrease a critical concern for meat and dairy supplies, which already account for around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions as mentioned by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in their report.

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Read more: https://impakter.com/climate-change-could-cut-grasslands-in-half-by-2100/

The abstract of the study;

Climate change drives a decline in global grazing systems

Chaohui Li¹ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3951-7141 lichaohui@pku.edu.cn
Maximilian Kotz
Prajal Pradhan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0491-5489
Xudong Wu
Yuanchao Hu
Zhi Li
Guoqian Chen¹ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1173-6796 gqchen@pku.edu.cn

Edited by Nils Stenseth, Universitetet i Oslo, Oslo, Norway; received November 27, 2025; accepted December 23, 2025

February 9, 2026

123 (7) e2534015123

Significance

Grazing systems form critical livelihood bases for hundreds of millions of people across diverse ecological and socioeconomic contexts, yet we lack a global understanding of their sensitivity to climate change. Applying a “safe climatic space” framework, we project a 36 to 50% contraction in suitable grazing areas by 2100 due to future climate change. We show the loss of safe climatic space for grazing overlaps significantly with regions already suffering from severe poverty, hunger, and political fragility. We estimate this could displace the livelihoods of over 100 million pastoralist and 1.4 billion livestock. These findings highlight how climate change will compound existing inequalities, threatening to destabilize the world’s most extensive food production system and the communities that depend on it.

Abstract

Grazing systems represent the most extensive production systems in the world and are highly sensitive to climate change. However, their global-scale sensitivity and vulnerability to climate impacts remain poorly understood. Here, we apply the safe climatic space framework to assess how changes in core climatic drivers of grazing suitability, including temperature, precipitation, humidity, and wind speed, will reshape global grassland-based grazing systems. Our analysis projects a net decline of 36 to 50% of areas in climate suitability for grazing by 2100, accompanied by inter- and intracontinental shift of grazing suitability. These changes are expected to negatively affect 110 to 140 million pastoralists and 1.4 to 1.6 billion livestock, with particularly severe impacts in Africa. We further show that 51 to 81% of these impacted populations reside in countries with low income, serious hunger, severe gender inequality, and high political fragility. Our study implies that future climate change will threaten grazing suitability across large portions of Earth, endangering the livelihoods of numerous communities and potentially triggering widespread socioeconomic consequences.

Read more (paywalled): https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2534015123

Unfortunately the full study is paywalled, but I think we get the idea.

While grasslands originally appeared around 40 million years ago, grassland expansion began around 23 million years ago, when the earth was in a cooling phase, though the early part of this period was significantly warmer than today.

The problem holding grass back was competition with trees – it’s hard for grasslands to thrive when competing for sunlight with a towering forest. The cooler, dryer conditions which prevailed when grasslands started to dominate killed vast tracts of forest, allowing hardier grasslands to thrive.

Since the evolution of humans, another way to encourage grasslands and tip the balance in favour of grass has emerged.

Native American imprint in palaeoecology

Marc D. Abrams and Gregory J. Nowacki

ARISING FROM W. W. Oswald et al. Nature Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0466-0 (2020)

Southern New England in the United States had a long history of Native American habitation and land use and was dominated by vast expanses of oak (Quercus) and pine (Pinus) forests. A recent paper by Oswald et al. posits that: regional fires were mainly climate-controlled and played a minor ecological role; the region was dominated by closed-canopy, old-growth forests; and Native American land use had little impact on vegetation. We disagree with these conclusions because of limitations in palaeoecological methods, particularly in detecting lower-intensity surface fires, and in that they contradict extensive scientific research in multiple disciplines. Over the last decade or more, the palaeoecological view has become increasingly climate-centric, which contradicts the proud legacy and heritage of land use by Indigenous people, worldwide, and aims and methodologies of vegetation managers promoting natural ecosystems and fire regimes.

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In southern New England, modern-day lightning-strike density is low and is normally associated with rain events (that is, a lack of dry lightning needed to sustain large fires). Moreover, lightning storms are largely restricted to the summer when humidity is high and vegetation flammability is low, making them an unlikely ignition source. Oswald et al. state that “During times when Native populations were relatively high, we found no evidence for forest clearance, elevated use of fire, or widespread agriculture”. In contrast, Patterson and Sassaman reported a substantial amount of Indigenous burning and agricultural fields in coastal areas. A book written on the subject concluded that Native American populations in southern New England practised extensive agriculture. Moreover, the human population increased in response to the widespread adoption of maize agriculture during the Late Woodland period

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Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0578-6.epdf?sharing_token=yAr3b7YXB1qGIa2U_3y7y9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PVpvdv2U91vikhE9iUT0LIxbwdNYky5VTFe76VNDNpRu9I4n9VlwSf4asgm7W0rsBQnFL4YAdzEan7Rx4uM3EoHL6K2Gi4phI9-o138EmS1BZchxUyt0YQ-NwynlEgJhw%3D

Native peoples all over the world deliberately burnt dense forests to encourage more grass, either for fire stick agriculture or because large grassland herbivores provide more food than trying to survive in a forest.

My point is, grasslands have competed with forests for 40 million years. There is no evidence grass cannot thrive in much warmer conditions, the limitation is in benign climates, trees outcompete grass, unless someone burns the forest down.

There is no risk of the world running short of grasslands, because if forests start significantly encroaching on farmers’ fields in a big way, there’s going to be an “accidental” fire, even in places where forests are protected by law.