Nebraska’s new producer-owned packing plant opened in May and is among the first to be built in America in a generation. It’s also an experiment that’s already rewriting the future for a small western town that was once the fastest shrinking community in Nebraska.

The model is something that Wyoming cattle ranchers say does have promise in the Cowboy State — if all the right pieces can ever come together.

“I’m very familiar with that, and I’m friends with the main guy who is there,” State Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, told Cowboy State Daily. “He’s a Wyoming fellow. He’s part of the Wasserburgers out of Lusk. And he is a major production, seed stock producer in Nebraska now.”

Driskill worked with Wasserburger five or so years ago to try and open a producer-owned packing plant in

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