Locavores and Meat

I was raised on Nebraska beef.  We usually had somewhere between 10 and 50 cattle on our family farm.  Our freezer would always be full of meat from a cow we had butchered at the small town meat processor.  Although I have still not seen a factory farm for beef, I know that Nebraska is highlighted as one of the states with a high concentration of them on the Factory Farm Map (see in Resources section on the side of this blog).  Indiana, for example,  is also shown on this same map for the concentration of factory pig farms.

In the New York Times today, there is a piece on the impact on the environment from such factory farms for meat.  However, the recent Locavore movement advocating to eat meat from smaller, local farms does not appear to be the solution, as noted with facts by this author:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/the-myth-of-sustainable-meat.html?_r=1&emc=eta1