As Tyson closure looms, Lexington prepares for a future without the city’s largest employer

In Lexington, everyone knows someone who will be impacted by the impending closure of the Tyson Foods beef processing plant.

“I have brothers, friends, cousins [who work at Tyson],” Javier Ramirez said in Spanish as he sat at a table near the lunch buffet at his family’s restaurant, La Hacienda. “Everybody knows each other here in this town.”

Ramirez worked at the meatpacking plant for 34 years before retiring in April. In November, Tyson made the unexpected announcement that the Lexington facility would close in January. The massive plant along U.S. Highway 283 employs more than 3,200 people.

The news shook the small city of about 10,000 people. Workers without roots in Lexington will likely move elsewhere. Hundreds, if not thousands, of employees who have built lives and families in the city face tough decisions. And business owners, like Ramirez, are left wondering what they’ll do if a predicted population exodus comes to pass.

“A lot of us are going to leave,” he said. “But because we have things here, like I have my restaurant, it would be hard to move to another place.”

The closure comes amid significant economic issues in the cattle industry. In 2025, the U.S. recorded its smallest beef cattle herd in more than 70 years, and meatpackers are losing money as they operate well below capacity. Drovers Magazine reported that the Lexington plant was slaughtering about 3,600 to 3,700 head of cattle per day. The facility’s capacity is 5,000 head daily.

“[Tyson] has been losing a lot of money on the cattle side, as are all beef packers,” said David Anderson, a livestock economist at Texas A&M University. “I suspect that the Lexington plant was probably less efficient, or a higher-cost plant for them.”

Tyson also announced it would scale down to just one shift at its plant in Amarillo, Texas, impacting more than 1,700 employees.

But Amarillo is better suited than Lexington to absorb the job losses. It has a population of more than 200,000 people and a number of other major employers. In Lexington, the meatpacking plant has been a centerpiece of the city for more than three decades. For many, it’s difficult to imagine a future without it.

“I don’t think everybody realizes how big of an impact this is gonna have on us and everybody around us,” Lexington resident Teresa Razo said.

Plant fueled population growth

The question now for Lexington is how many people will leave. Razo, who has lived in the city since the early '90s, said she expects some of the younger single workers to move on to the next job in a new city. But for employees who made Lexington a home in the past three decades, moving is a much taller task.

“There’s a lot of people that have just arrived here, and they just look for, like, the quicker money or quicker opportunities. I think that’s for the younger crowd,” she said. “But I do think people that have a lot of family here will try to stay here. The weather can sometimes be pretty harsh in Nebraska, but I think it’s a wonderful place to raise your children.”

Before Tyson, there was Sperry New Holland, a manufacturer that arrived in Lexington in 1975. By the early 1980s, it employed a peak of about 900 people and was heralded as an economic boon to the town. But the subsequent years brought multiple rounds of layoffs, and by 1985, the plant was shut down.

City leaders began a multi-year effort to find a buyer for the building. They succeeded when Iowa Beef Packers bought the plant and renovated it for beef processing. Tyson Foods acquired IBP in 2001 and began operating the Lexington meatpacking plant.

Under Tyson’s ownership, the plant drastically expanded in both size and employees. New housing popped up for the influx of workers. Between 1990 and 2000, the city’s population nearly doubled, according to Census data.

The rapid growth also meant demographic change. Data from the 2023 American Community Survey estimated that about 41% of Lexington’s population was born outside of the U.S., and about 60% identified as Hispanic. Most of the immigrant population hails from Latin America, while about 17% is from Africa.

“We have the world in Lexington, Nebraska,” said Jennifer Norton, the director of the Lexington library.

That’s clear in the city’s small downtown area. There’s a Somali community center and an African grocery store. A Latin American restaurant or bakery on every corner. Church signage is displayed in English, Spanish and Arabic.

“I think people have a misconception of what Lexington is – that we’re overrun by the immigrant population, when it’s not that way at all,” Norton said. “We are a community. All of us belong here. Every single culture that is here belongs here, and we welcome everyone.”

Razo, too, enjoyed raising her kids in a diverse community while still getting a small town experience.

“We have a very diversified community here,” Razo said. “I think that’s what makes us, us. And we’ve learned to just take in every culture to the best of our abilities.”

‘No simple short-term solutions’

In a press release issued on Dec. 5, the Lexington City Council said there are “no simple short-term solutions to replace existing jobs.”

“We are committed to identifying new investment and job opportunities for our residents,” the release said. “The support of entrepreneurship, promotion of skills training, investment in infrastructure, and initiatives to position Lexington for recovery are priorities.”

Though uneasy, the attitude in Lexington isn’t defeatist. ‘Lex Strong’ or ‘Fuerza Lexington' is scrawled on the windows of cars and businesses across town. After Tyson placed an order for 450 military green T-Shirts from a local print shop – and then canceled the order upon the news of the plant closure – the shop printed ‘Lexington Strong’ on the shirts and sold out of them in less than two weeks. At the library, Norton offered up study rooms for job interviews. Everyone, she said, was thinking about what they could do to help on an individual level.

That was the case for Drew Price, who owns a watersports rental company at nearby Johnson Lake. He also operates a fleet of four party buses.

“When I heard the news, I instantly thought, ‘Oh no, you know, what are these people going to do? How are they going to get to a different city?’” Price said. “Immediately that night, I started brainstorming how I could contribute to help people get through this.”

He came up with the idea to work with meatpacking plants in nearby cities – Grand Island, North Platte and Gibbon – to arrange transportation on his party buses for workers who want to stay in Lexington but are looking for jobs elsewhere. For now, the details are still up in the air. Price said he’s been in touch with Sustainable Beef in North Platte, an hour drive away from Lexington.

“I’d hate to see, you know, families just up and move for a job,” Price said. “If we could transport them, if that’s the main concern, I’d like to step up and help out.”

State and local organizations have teamed up in recent weeks to hold job and resource fairs for laid-off employees. More than 740 people attended two resource fairs in early December, according to Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen.