报告题目：Using Feed Supplements to Curb Livestock Methane Emissions?
报 告 人：邵鲁生
报告时间：2025年07月12日（星期六），14:00-15:30
报告地点：明哲楼517
主办单位：东北财经大学现代供应链管理研究院
报名方式：请用微信扫描下方二维码报名
【报告人简介】
Lusheng Shao is a Professor of Operations Management, and his research interests include competition in supply chains, contracts and incentives, and more recently, sustainable operations with a focus on agriculture and energy. Professor Shao’s research has been published in leading operations journals such as Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management. He is currently an Associate Editor of Decision Sciences and an editorial board member of Production and Operations Management.
【摘要】
Feed supplements have recently been touted as an effective means to reducing methane emissions from livestock (e.g., cattle and sheep). In this paper, we examine economic, social and environmental implications of this innovation in a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and multiple farmers. We develop a parsimonious game model to study the farmers’ production and adoption decisions and the manufacturer's pricing decision for the supplement. We find that the use of feed supplement may have unintended consequences because it could incentivize farmers to increase the livestock production quantity, resulting in more methane emissions. Although reducing the feed supplement's production cost (e.g., R&D grants) incentivizes more adoption of the supplement, the total methane emissions may be higher. Similarly, providing financial incentives to farmers for methane emission reductions (e.g., carbon credits) may cause more damages to the environment. These results vanish when the farmers do not adjust its livestock quantity, thereby highlighting the important role of endogenizing the farmers’ production decisions when examining the effectiveness of feed supplement in curbing methane emissions. Our findings also caution that government support to the manufacturer for production cost reductions (or to the farmers for cutting methane emissions) may backfire from the environmental perspective.
