Monfort of Colorado, Inc. - 1969 dated Specimen Stock Certificate

Specimen Stock printed by Security-Columbian Banknote Company.

The Batista family of Brazil and the Monfort family of Greeley got their starts in similar ways, so it may be appropriate that the Batista family now operates the Greeley company that was started almost eight decades ago by the Monforts. What was to become Monfort of Colorado, then Monfort Inc., then ConAgra Red Meats, then Swift & Co., and now JBS Swift & Co., was started in the Depression of the 1930s by a Greeley school teacher, Warren Monfort, who decided to buy 18 head of cattle and feed them on the family farm north of Greeley. What is now JBS S.A., the parent company of JBS Swift & Co., was started in 1953 by Jos Batista Sobrinho, who slaughtered one head a day to feed workers who were building what would become Brasilia, the new capital city of Brazil. Warren’s son, Kenny, dropped out of college to assume control of the Greeley company in 1950, at which time the family feedlot had grown to about 8,000 head. Kenny grew the company to include packing plants in Greeley and Grand Island, Neb., as well as three feedlots in Colorado, before selling the company to ConAgra Foods. His sons, Dick and Charlie, stayed with ConAgra Red Meats into the 1990s. In 2002, ConAgra sold the company to a group of investors and the name was changed to Swift & Co. In May 2007, the Batista family bought Swift and changed its name again, to JBS Swift & Co. It’s that latest change that brings one of Greeley’s oldest companies back to its roots — that of a family-operated business dedicated to providing a quality meat product, only now that product is going worldwide.