"In Nebraska, Blackshirt Feeders LP is building the country’s largest feedlot for 200,000 beef cattle on a square-mile slab of concrete."

"HAIGLER, Neb. — The far southwestern corner of this state unfurls in a rolling sea of dusky-green prairie where cattle have outnumbered people for generations.

A sign along U.S. Highway 34, just before the road crosses into Dundy County from Colorado, reads “Welcome to Beef Country.” Another along State Highway 27, which wanders north from the shortgrass hills of northwest Kansas, declares Dundy a “livestock friendly county.” 

Nearly everything here—the farm supply stores, the corn fields, the gas stations, the hotels, the schools, the bars—operates, one way or another, in service of the great American beef machine. Every grumbling cattle-hauling semi-truck, every gust of manure-saturated wind, is a reminder that this vast plain, beyond the comprehension of most Americans, feeds their appetites nonetheless.

Decades ago, most cattle raised in the United States grazed on grasslands like these, taking several years to reach their optimal slaughter weight, their most profitable girth. But in the 1950s ranchers figured out that if cattle spend their final months in pens and are fed a highly fattening grain-based diet, that timeframe shrinks."

Georgina Gustin reports for Inside Climate News August 9, 2026. [2]