The effect of storms on Finnish dairy farms: electrical outage statistics and the effect on milk production
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The effect of storms on Finnish dairy farms: electrical outage statistics and the effect on milk production Hanna Huitu1 · Kim Kaustell1 · Matti Pastell1 Received: 19 November 2018 / Accepted: 20 August 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Due to technological advancement, agricultural production is increasingly dependent on electricity. At the same time, power delivery infrastructures are challenged by extreme weather events. Losses in primary food production due to electrical outages are still largely unquantified. This paper reports the effect of storm-induced power outages on milk production in Finland. The study used detailed, farm-level records of power cuts from 2010 to 2015 available from two power companies and contrasted them to the respective monthly milk production statistics collected at farm level. For each major storm event, deviation in the milk production compared to previous month was calculated for each farm. Effect of power outages onto milk production was estimated using linear mixed modeling. Power outages mainly occurred during and after storm events, and dairy farms experienced more outages than what was a national average for rural power customers. The power outages decreased the monthly milk yield of the most affected farms by 4.6% (farms experiencing outages longer than 72 h), and production recovered already for the month following the storm event. The results imply that milk production in Finland is prepared and resilient toward power outages shorter than 3 days and that the current magnitude of power outages in dairy farms is higher than what was known previously. Keywords Power outage · Dairy farming · Milk production · Storm
1 Introduction Technological advancement has made agricultural production more and more dependent on electricity. At the same time, power delivery infrastructures are increasingly challenged by extreme weather events. Extreme weather events have been identified as a major cause of power failures worldwide (Campbell and Lowry 2012; Panteli and Mancarella 2015; Mukherjee et al. 2018). However, losses in primary food production due to electrical outages are still largely unquantified. The Finnish milk production sector serves several important goals. Annual production of 2.3 million tonnes fulfills the high national demand—yearly per capita consumption of milk * Hanna Huitu [email protected] 1
Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Latokartanonkaari 9, 00790 Helsinki, Finland
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in Finland is over 120 L, which is among the biggest highest in the world (FAO 2020). Dairy products are also the most significant single product group in Finnish food exports: They represent 17% of the total food exports (Finnish Customs 2019) and thus bring export revenue. In a complex technological system like a modern dairy farm, energy consumption and share of electricity from the total energy use are dependent on the technology at the dairy farm (Upton et al. 2015). Electricity also plays a major role in powering control, automa
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