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Agriculture remains a leading source of water pollution in the United States, and climate change may exacerbate this relationship. We quantify increases in nutrient runoff following extreme precipitation events, showing that spikes are higher in regions with crop and livestock production. The spike per head is smaller around large‐scale livestock production, relative to small‐scale, and cover crops mitigate runoff. Legacy nutrients enter the surface water following extreme precipitation, regardless of current activity. We shed light on practices to protect water quality with more frequent extreme precipitation events and demonstrate the importance of including these events in empirical models of water quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last several decades, Brazil has become both the world's leading soy producer and the world's leading consumer of hazardous pesticides. Despite identified links between pesticide exposure and carcinogenesis, there has been little populationlevel research on the effects of pesticide intensification on broader human health in Brazil. We estimate the relationship between expanded soy production--and related community exposure to pesticides--on childhood cancer incidence using 15 y of data on disease mortality. We find a statistically significant increase in pediatric leukemia following expanded local soy production, but timely access to treatment mitigates this relationship. We show that pesticide exposure likely occurs via water supply penetration. Our findings represent only the tip of the iceberg for substantial health externalities of high-input crop production and land use change. Our results are of particular interest in developing contexts with demand for intensified food production systems and underscore the need for stronger regulation of pesticides and increased public health attention to exposure in the broader community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the Clean Water Act's regulation of point source pollution has had a significant effect on water quality, nonpoint sources of pollution, especially animal agriculture, remain a leading unevenly regulated source of water pollution in the United States. This work studies the effectiveness of local manure management regulations on dairy farms in Wisconsin. Wisconsin represents a unique policy experiment in the delegation of nonpoint agricultural pollution policy in a state with economically important small, nonpoint, dairy farms. Using hand collected regulatory data from Wisconsin counties we estimate the effects of changes in local regulations on water quality outcomes. The results demonstrate that a few easily implemented and verifiable regulations such as nutrient management plans have significant short‐term effects on water quality, whereas other less observable and difficult to implement regulations have no discernible effects in the short term. The work points to a number of potential policy levers to improve the Management of nonpoint pollution, as well as the challenges of nonpoint source regulatory policies on slow‐moving hydrologic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Livestock production plays a vital role in the global economy, yet little is known about how climate change will affect the industry. Studies of crop agriculture may not translate to livestock agriculture due to differences in the set of potential adaptation strategies. Ranchers' responses to changing weather and climate are particularly relevant in the Brazilian Amazon, where the dry season is increasing by as much as 0.6 days per year. A longer dry season increases production risks as animals may succumb to starvation, lack of water, or heat stress. I pair transaction data and weather shocks to show that ranchers strategically sold animals prior to the dry season, in response to two predictors of an extreme dry season: sporadic rainfall and high temperatures prior to the dry season. Ranchers sold animals for both fattening and slaughter in response to sporadic rainfall prior. Nearly half of animals initially sold for fattening were sold for slaughter 90 days later. In contrast, ranchers responded to high temperatures solely by selling for slaughter, suggesting that current on‐farm technologies are insufficient to prevent losses from heat stress. The overall supply increased in years with sporadic rainfall and high temperatures, but the supply fell by a greater amount the following year. My results suggest that farmers are currently not fully insulated from the effects of a severe dry season. As severe dry seasons become more frequent, the industry will likely increasingly rely on feedlots and need additional methods to cope with heat stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. To empirically evaluate the relationship between presence of a state or federal prison and COVID-19 case and death counts. Methods. We merged data on locations of federal and state prisons and of local and county jails with daily case and death counts in the United States. We used a selection-on-observables design to estimate the correlation between prisons and COVID-19 spread, controlling for known correlates of COVID-19. Results. We found empirical evidence that the presence and capacities of prisons are strong correlates of county-level COVID-19 case counts. The presence of a state or federal prison in a county corresponded with a 9% increase in the COVID-19 case count during the first wave of the pandemic, ending July 1, 2020. Conclusions. Our results suggest that the public health implications of these facilities extend beyond the health of employees and incarcerated individuals, and policymakers should explicitly consider the public health concerns posed by these facilities when developing pandemic-response policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]