LINCOLN — Nebraska “got our butts kicked” by the Tyson Foods decision to close a Lexington beef plant employing about 3,200 people, Gov. Jim Pillen said Monday. But he sees a possible Hail Mary pass to resurrect the industrial property.

Pillen, in an interview with the Nebraska Examiner on the agribusiness closure, said he learned officially of Tyson’s decision Friday at noon, just a few hours before the Arkansas-based multinational corporation made the news public.

He said his team had been seeking a meeting with company officials amid the struggles faced by the cattle industry, including cutters and other meat processors facing lower cattle supplies and higher retail prices for beef.

The governor said he was told a key contributor to Tyson’s decision involved the age and inefficiencies of the Lexington factory, which was built decades ago to manufacture combines and other farm machinery.

The “good news,” Pillen said, is that Tyson officials are exploring other options for the Lexington property, including repurposing it into a specialty, “value-added” agricultural operation akin to Tyson’s Omaha plant that produces millions of pounds of raw and cooked bacon.

Specialty Meat Operation?

His hope, he said, is that the company might take a cattle carcass, for example, Pillen said, and create a specific type of steak or other commodity and make something people want, as does Tyson’s Omaha plant.

“There [are] discussions going on within the Tyson organization, ‘How can we turn that plant into a value-added plant with either pork, beef or poultry because they’re in that space. That’s a real-life possibility,” Pillen said.

Tyson Foods did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The governor harkened back to the origins of the Lexington Tyson plant. It was built originally to manufacture farm implements for Sperry-New Holland, which during the farm crisis in 1985 announced it would close and eliminate 940 jobs.

IBP in 1990 opened the property as a converted meatpacking facility. The company later was acquired by Tyson Foods, doing pivotal work for ranchers in west-central Nebraska. Pillen said the plant might have survived this round of Tyson cuts had it been tailor-made for beef production.

“My guess would be that if that plant would have been built brand new from scratch, this is a conversation that wouldn’t be taking place,” Pillen said. “They took lemons after New Holland and made lemonade out of it for a while. But as it got really, really competitive, [and] it’s not really one of the best plants in the United States.”

Asked whether workforce availability problems influenced Tyson — including limited availability of temporary foreign workers and immigrants who have staffed many of the cutting-floor jobs — Pillen said he was told the Lexington plant had a “great team,” which “made it extra hard.”

“Tyson wants to turn it into something because … when you have a great team of people, the last thing you want to do is walk.”

‘Lived This Nightmare Before’

Nebraska’s congressional representatives have taken a harder line on the closing than Pillen, who defended Tyson as an American-owned meat-processing, protein provider. He has said he is not an advocate of foreign-owned businesses crowding the food space.

Pillen’s family runs a massive hog and hog genetics operation based in Columbus, and his family has a significant ownership stake in a pork-production plant in Fremont. He said his family has long done business with Tyson’s plant in Madison. The company also has a major plant in Dakota City.

U.S. Rep Mike Flood, R-Neb, said in a video on social media that “we’ve lived this nightmare before,” when Tyson pulled out of Norfolk nearly 20 years ago.

He said the Tyson decision for Lexington “brought a lot of emotion back.” In 2006, he was a new state senator representing Norfolk when he said he got a call that the Norfolk plant would close and eliminate 1,300 jobs.

He showed a video of the abandoned Tyson plant in Norfolk and asked Tyson to help resurrect the Lexington facility in some way, even if for another company.

“We can do this much better,” he said. He also said, “There is life after Tyson,” adding that he worked with a local hospital in his northeast Nebraska town to build a nursing school. He said it helped create a “regional medical destination” with a health service system he called “unparalleled for a town our size.”

He said his city’s downtown has since seen major revitalization projects.

‘Dude Ranch’ Fascination

Pillen acknowledged Tyson’s presence in other communities, saying,  “I think it’s incredibly important we’re focused on what we have.”

He said the state and its agricultural-focused economy cannot afford to feel sorry for itself.

“What are we going to do?” he asked. “Wallow in the muck  … or are we going to roll up our sleeves and try to solve something?” He said he has spent much of his time since Friday “calling people and getting input” on next steps.

He said he has been privy to conversations about what it would take for the new Sustainable Beef in the North Platte area to take on a second shift  — perhaps opening slots earlier than anticipated for some Lexington-based workers.

The Lexington plant is to close around Jan. 20.

Pillen said one of the easiest, short-term ways to help might be to bus or transport former Lexington plant workers to the North Platte-area plant. He said Sustainable Beef already has hired many of their first 800 workers and a chunk was from Lexington.

“So that transfer has been taking place,” he said. “We’re talking to people on all fronts to be able to get ideas and bring people together.”

Pillen, Nebraska’s first farmer-governor in more than a century, talked about reasons behind the U.S. cattle shortage that has impacted meatpacking companies and processors.

Among factors reducing the heads of cattle being raised, Pillen said, are extended drought conditions that shrank “mama cow herds” and bad winters that hurt cattle conception rates. He said the 2023 winter reduced herds and births by more than 300,000 cattle in Nebraska alone.

Also, he said much ranch land is being gobbled up by rich people that prefer operating a “dude ranch” over raising cattle, which has contributed.

‘Gotta Make Lemonade’

Pillen said the number of jobs eliminated by Tyson may be lower than the 3,200 the company reported because of fewer shifts being run during tight times. But he called the loss devastating to a community of about 11,000 people in Dawson County.

He urged Nebraskans to consider donating to charitable organizations, including local churches and civic groups trying to gather help for affected workers and their families over the holiday season.

He said Tyson didn’t ask for state incentives or other changes to keep the Lexington plant open. He said ag producers and industrial users are more interested in lasting property tax relief.

Tyson’s cuts stretched beyond Nebraska’s Lexington plant, which slaughtered up to 5,000 cattle a day, according to industry reports. The company said it was also downsizing a Texas beef plant to a single shift each day from two.

“We’re working our tails off,” Pillen said of his team. “This was a bad lemon drop day. But we gotta make lemonade out of it.”

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/11/24/state-hunts-way-forward-after-ne...