Anaerobic digesters can provide renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from manure management. Government policies that encourage digester adoption by livestock operations include construction cost-share grants, renewable electricity subsidies, and carbon pricing (offset) programs....

Climate change could affect the costs and returns of livestock production by altering the thermal environment of animals thereby affecting animal health, reproduction, and the efficiency by which livestock convert feed into retained products (especially meat and milk). In the United States,...

Animal waste from confined animal feeding operations is a potential source of air and water quality degradation from evaporation of gases, runoff to surface water, and leaching to ground water. This report assesses the potential economic and environmental tradeoffs between water quality policies...

Livestock waste pollutes multiple environmental media along multiple dimensions. This study explores the economic and environmental implications of single-medium and coordinated multi-media policies for reducing manure-related externalities, with particular attention paid to tradeoffs that occur...

Anaerobic digesters that capture and burn manure methane can provide a renewable source of energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Paying producers for these emission reductions—either directly or through a carbon offset market—could substantially increase digester adoption....

This paper considers the economic and environmental implications of regulating water and air nitrogen emissions under single and multi-environmental media policies in the U.S. hog industry. We examine tradeoffs from policies designed to correct an externality in one medium, when there are...

Implementation of new CAFO regulations and EQIP payments could have important implications for the structure of the hog sector. This study uses a farm-level positive mathematical programming model to estimate the distribution of the economic and environmental effects of these new policies across...

Methane digesters—biogas recovery systems that use methane from manure to generate electricity—have not been widely adopted in the United States because costs have exceeded benefits to operators. Burning methane in a digester reduces greenhouse gas emissions from manure management. A policy...

U.S. environmental regulations often vary by the size of the operation, with larger operations facing more regulatory stringency. When the size distribution of firms is heavily skewed, regulation size thresholds can reduce transaction costs for regulatory agencies while bringing most production...

Biogas recovery systems that use methane from manure to generate electricity have not been widely adopted in U.S. mainly because the costs of constructing and maintaining these systems have exceeded the value of the benefits provided. Climate change mitigation and renewable energy policies could...