With its beef and dairy connections, RANGE seeks to turn Amarillo into an innovation hub

Hoping to take advantage of the Amarillo area’s abundant beef and dairy industries, which make it among the nation’s leaders, officials from the Regional Accelerator and New Growth Engine (RANGE) announced the launch of its innovation hub that aims to make Amarillo the innovator in beef and dairy products.

The RANGE is made up of local business leaders who intend to make the city a hub for its products and the innovator in technologies that set the standard in the beef and dairy industries. With about one-third of all U.S. beef cattle being raised or processed within 150 miles of the city, this group of business leaders see value in Amarillo being the first thing thought about when it comes to beef and dairy products.

Laying the framework for the area, the RANGE will work to make Amarillo a world leader in facilitating research, developing programs and creating technology that addresses present and future challenges in the beef, dairy and crop-production industries.

Laura Street, a member of the RANGE, spoke about the idea and concept behind the innovation hub.

“The RANGE will create a multi-industry ecosystem that encourages protein-related production, research and innovation,” Street said. "We envision a global food hub that fortifies the food supply chain while transforming the future economic growth of our region.”

Street said that this is an effort to show the nation what is special about Amarillo and using that to create innovation in the industry it excels in to attract the best to the area.

“This is an economic development, innovation research conglomeration of many different companies, people and universities coming together to create something bigger than what we have now,” Street said. “If we come together and look at what our future is in a different way, then we synergize everything we have. We build on that; then our future becomes more varied and robust.”

Street envisions this as an economic development tool with its industry partnerships to tackle issues that many companies have outsourced to outside of the area and keep those in the Texas Panhandle for local solutions. She believes that the organization will bring the experts and the best to the area to solve the issues affecting the Texas Panhandle.

Jason Herrick, the president of the RANGE, spoke about implementing the organization's mission.

“Our board will be made up of the cattle and dairy industry members, to give us an industry feedback mechanism,” Herrick said.

He said that the group has already spoken about ideas on better and more efficient ways of cutting meat, as well as tracking cattle from end to end. Some of the initial feedback from cattle feeders was about measuring the amount of carbon and nitrogen used in their cattle. RANGE will contract with local universities to conduct this research using grants.

“The model has really changed when in the past, someone at the university would have a great idea and would seek research dollars to commercialize the idea,” Herrick said. “Now, industry says, 'I have this problem that needs to get solved.' Grant funders are more interested in funding a regional collaboration that has the industry at the table with industry buy-in, and then bringing in researchers to measure the data.”

Herrick said that among the first tasks being tackled is tracking the carbon footprint of cattle methane emissions necessary, since most studies are well over a decade old that are being used. He also said that these studies need to be more localized, since many were done in other countries with different climates.

According to Herrick, the Texas Panhandle region has the optimal weather for efficient cattle breeding, creating less carbon footprint. This can be very valuable when dealing with other industries trying to offset their carbon footprints in the form of carbon credits, which earn the cattle industry more money.

Matt Garner, executive director of the RANGE, spoke about his organization's ambitions and the industry concerns they hope to collaborate with.

“To increase beef production, to feed more of the country, you are not going to be able to add another shift or more days in the week; you are going to have to increase line speed,” Warner said. “Automation is going to have to be added to be able to increase production in the area.”

He said that the way beef is produced now is very labor intensive and mostly all done manually, which limits total production. He said that the rising costs of employees and availability are also limiting factors. Garner feels that the RANGE will help the industry solve these problems while creating more jobs with offshoots to the tech industry.

Garner said that the primary industry concerns about the shortage of water and labor in the region led to the idea of forming the RANGE.

“There are pressures about how we produce more product in the region with limited resources,” Garner said. “We will not be able to use water as we did in the past to create more products. How do we produce more food with fewer employees?"

Garner said that the primary industry concerns about the shortage of water and labor in the region led to the ideas about forming the RANGE.

“We envision an Amarillo that’s as central to the beef and dairy production industry as Silicon Valley is to the technology industry, and we’ll incubate technology, innovation and capital to grow and attract uniquely aligned business and talent to the region.”

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: RANGE plans to innovate Amarillo area cattle and dairy industry