Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations
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Large scale production agriculture has changed rural communities over the past 30 years. Although family farms have frequently been consolidated into larger operations, many rural residents do not recognize the issue due to the industry's primary public image through crop production. Gradually though, large scale livestock production has started gaining more attention. An example of this is the proposed 5,000 cow dairy near the Darby Creek about 25 miles west of Columbus.
Also, how do we define mega farms? Too much manure? I don't know many farmers, but the few I have met did not own the land they worked on. They didn't live on "family farms" but they didn't work for "mega farms" either.
As a suburban dweller, I would like to support local farmers more, but I have no use for feed corn.
If that sounds like a mess, that's because it is, yet some version of that is happening everytime you buy a meat, egg or dairy product at a grocery store. This NY Times article Link is full of stats and gives a pretty fair assessment of the situation, although it focuses more on the meat side of things.
In regards to the megafarm definition, one possible way to look at it is sustainability. One way to run a farm is raising livestock on a diet of rotating supply of crops grown on your land, then taking the manure and recycling it as fertilizer.
Another way to run a "farm" is this: "The dike of a 120,000-square-foot lagoon ... ruptured, releasing 25.8 million gallons of effluvium .... It was the biggest environmental spill in United States history, more than twice as big as the Exxon Valdez oil spill six years earlier. The sludge was so toxic it burned your skin if you touched it, and so dense it took almost two months to make its way sixteen miles downstream to the ocean. From the headwaters to the sea, every creature living in the river was killed. Fish died by the millions." (Link
I'm not saying we need to return an agrarian society, or everyone should adopt veganism, but everyone should be aware of what goes in to what they are eating and consider Michael Pollan's dictum from In Defense of Food: "Eat food, not too much, mainly plants."
I'm not convinced that meat and especially animal products such as eggs and milk are all that bad for the environment and our health, but I could be wrong. Wouldn't cows be in pain if we didn't milk them? (I dunno...just asking.)