Golden Triangle of Meat-packing

The increased production of animal feed permitted the establishment of large feedlots in which cattle could be collected and fattened before being sent to slaughterhouses.

[4] In 1983, a small meat packing plant in Garden City, later owned by ConAgra, began expanding and eventually employed 2,300 people.

[7] Cargill began operations in Dodge City in 1979 and its plant eventually reached a capacity of slaughtering and processing 6,000 cattle per day.

That number of employees comprises about one-third of the total employed work force in Seward County where Liberal is located.

Unemployment was low; the population was largely non-Hispanic white; and most Anglos were not interested in the hard and dangerous work associated with a meat-packing plant.

"[16] In the 1980s, IBP recruited workers from far and wide for its Garden City plant, including 2,000 former refugees from Southeast Asia, mostly Vietnamese.

In Garden City, Spanish speaking children made up more than one-half of the school population and Mexican-owned businesses abounded.

[19] In 2006, Pew Research Center estimated that 27 percent of the employees of meat processing plants nationwide were undocumented aliens.

In 2018, Deborah and James Fallows titled an article about Dodge City, "A Conservative Town Embraces its Immigrant Population, Documented or Undocumented."

[25] In 2006, Muslims from Somalia, Burma, Sudan, and Ethiopia began arriving in Garden City and in 2021 they were joined by a few Afghans.

[27] In 2016, three Anglo men from near Garden City were arrested for plotting to bomb a makeshift mosque in an apartment house largely occupied by Muslims.