Economic Reinvention Through Biomanufacturing
In “To Build a Biorubber Industry on the Prairie” (Issues, Winter 2025), Tim Dawsey addresses several issues now facing communities in southeast Kansas—and across the United States. Many communities have become stagnant or declined in growth, or both, though their geographic area has great economic potential. Located in the middle of an extensive network of state highways, with access to the Interstate Highway System, a railroad system, and a regional airport, southeast Kansas and other parts of the region have noteworthy potential for manufacturing and shipping.
The approach of interconnecting research, agriculture, product development, and manufacturing is a promising vertical technique for reviving communities. It provides opportunity and growth for all facets of the economic ladder. Using guayule, as Dawsey examines, or other plants as a substitute for rubber has many benefits. It would, for example, change farmers’ crop rotation practices, bringing several positive environmental effects. It would change soil characteristics depending on the nutrients the crop uses or returns to the soil. Depending on the crop’s root system, it would beneficially alter the structure of the soil. But perhaps the key impact would be with weed and insect control, as this would change farmers’ normal practices. It would be a break from the norm, changing the weed and insect pressure cycles farmers now typically face. And not to be overlooked, of course, guayule would provide farmers with an additional income source.
Interconnecting research, agriculture, product development, and manufacturing is a promising vertical technique for reviving communities.
The vertical integration of the system from research to agriculture to manufacturing allows for job creation in each area that has been stagnant. The process from product development to eventual production brings and retains a diverse workforce. In southeast Kansas, there are multiple technical colleges that complement the major state university in developing the workforce. Product development and manufacturing create jobs with higher earning potential, which incentivizes young people to stay in the area and remain near the farm or home to assist their parents.
This multitier approach affects every segment of the local economy—housing, schools, and job creation—while increasing tax revenue to the area. And on a larger level, its greatest accomplishment would be enhancing national security by providing an alternative resource to rubber. This would reduce the United States’ dependence on imports and lead to greater self-sufficiency.
Dale Helwig
Economic Development Director
Cherokee County, Kansas
Tim Dawsey highlights a challenge that spans the US economy: the disconnect between research, industry needs, and workforce development. His account of how Pittsburg, Kansas, is meeting this challenge by navigating economic reinvention through biomanufacturing mirrors what is happening in regions across the country. There is no shortage of promising ideas, but without a coherent national strategy, communities are left piecing together fragmented funding streams, workforce pipelines, and industry partnerships, hoping that their efforts align at the right moment.
I see these challenges firsthand as CEO of the Bioscience Core Skills Institute, where we deploy skills-based hiring initiatives and lab skills credentials to help regions develop workforce pipelines that align with industry needs. From rural areas looking to leverage biotechnology to urban hubs seeking to expand biomanufacturing capacity, the barriers remain the same—talent gaps, unclear career pathways, and a lack of coordination between education, employers, and policymakers. In my role as Industry Needs cochair for BioMADE, a Department of Defense-funded bioindustrial manufacturing innovation institute, I work with industry leaders across the country who are struggling to find workforce-ready talent. The need for deliberate workforce integration in emerging industries such as biomanufacturing is a national concern, not just a regional one.
Without a coherent national strategy, communities are left piecing together fragmented funding streams, workforce pipelines, and industry partnerships, hoping that their efforts align at the right moment.
At the same time, while the economy is national, innovation and workforce development are inherently local and regional. Efforts such as the one in Pittsburg matter because they are built on deep relationships and local knowledge that allow for a more nuanced understanding of how innovation—particularly in bio-based industries—affects both the opportunities and the challenges of a given region. The introduction of biomaterials manufacturing, for example, isn’t just about creating jobs; it also means adapting to shifts in land use, supply chain infrastructure, and local workforce capabilities. When these efforts are driven by the people and institutions embedded in the community, they are far more likely to succeed because they reflect both the assets and the limitations of the region. National strategies must embrace and amplify these regional initiatives, ensuring they are connected to broader networks of funding, policy, and industry support while still allowing them to retain the agility and local responsiveness that make them effective.
Dawsey is right to call for better coordination, particularly in biomanufacturing, where the potential for economic transformation is significant but will remain unrealized without intentional workforce development. Pittsburg, Kansas, is ready, just as many other communities are. But readiness alone isn’t enough. These efforts need infrastructure, investment, and a system that helps regions engage with national priorities in a meaningful way. Without leadership and coordination, many of these efforts will remain just that: opportunities, not industries.
Angela Consani
Chief Executive Officer
Bioscience Core Skills Institute
Tim Dawsey challenges US farmers and regional university researchers to partner for accelerating nature-inspired material science and engineering. Although his article specifically points to the potential for farming guayule-producing plants to deliver a domestic alternative to natural rubber latex, it also speaks to a much larger vision that includes other crops tailored to address specific problems, such as drought-resistant crops to reduce water use, as well social and institutional factors related to regional resiliency, sustainability, economic growth, and the importance of translational research to convert ideas into practical reality.
An innovative future workforce is the primary product of any university or community college; students must be trained to be interdisciplinary thinkers, designers, and problem-solvers with the ability to speak many scientific and engineering languages. Dawsey invites students to speak a “farming language.” Nearly 1 trillion pounds of petroleum-based plastics are manufactured globally each year, and farmers are challenging scientists to “rethink” their production and use, in ways such as minimizing livestock exposure to plastic waste and creating plant-based products beyond food supply that enable circular economies of high-performance materials that are easier on the environment. Will the molecules from farmers’ fields serve as building blocks for the future semiconductor industry? Dawsey invites us to address this question.
An innovative future workforce is the primary product of any university or community college; students must be trained to be interdisciplinary thinkers, designers, and problem-solvers with the ability to speak many scientific and engineering languages.
Guayule exemplifies a plant-based rubber latex precursor, similar to natural rubber latex, that potentially enables novel elastomeric fibers, automobile tires, construction sealants, complex engineering gaskets, and consumer pressure-sensitive adhesives. The term “latex” is widely recognized from latex paints or latex gloves as being a durable polymeric coating. It is not commonly known, however, that latexes consist of high molecular weight polymers that are organized at the nanometer scale whose viscosity, or resistance to flow, is exceptionally low, thus enabling versatile manufacturing platforms. For example, the low viscosity of a latex is amenable to additive manufacturing, commonly called 3D printing, which can allow printing of rubber latex precursors into micron-scale objects; the diameter of a human hair is 100 microns, so these elastomers can be precisely formed into unprecedented lattices, gyroids, and foams. Nature also inspires researchers to consider more complex 3D structures, termed form factors, that are of lower density, thus requiring less consumption of raw materials but offering potentially superior performance to solid objects. One can imagine a farm producing a feedstock and, in a vertically integrated fashion, producing the gasket or the cushion necessary to repair farm equipment.
Dawsey’s article speaks about “doing more with less,” and in this case revitalizing agricultural communities with the recognition that water is precious. An abundance of fresh water is necessary for the agricultural industry, inspiring drought-resistant plants and technologies that optimize water utilization. As a community of researchers, we will continue to reduce, reuse, and recycle, but together we will reimagine the future farm.
Timothy E. Long
Professor, School of Molecular Sciences
Director, Biodesign Center for Sustainable Macromolecular Materials and Manufacturing
Arizona State University