Communities surrounded by dry natural landscapes and certain kinds of farmland recorded higher rates of Valley fever than communities that were not, and newly fallowed fields showed the same pattern, according to a study published in Science Advances by researchers at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley.
The finding lands as California reshapes its agricultural map. Drought, warming, and groundwater regulations are pushing land out of production, and the study suggests that these transitions carry a public health cost that has not been accounted for alongside the environmental and economic costs.
