Brazilian owned JBS Shuts Down Colorado Lamb Cooperative
Guess who's the number one importer of lamb to America?
It’s hard to believe we’ve gotten to this point.
We’ve sold out American farmers so bad we are literally giving billions of our money to foreign multinationals and foreign governments who are actively working to put our American farm families out of business.
This is not putting America first.
The story of Mountain States Rosen is a particularly sickening one:
Mountain States Rosen was a cooperative of ranchers out West who pooled together capital to buy a processing facility in Greeley, Colorado. Sheep from fifteen surrounding states were trucked there to be slaughtered and packaged. From there, retail cuts were distributed across the nation. At one point, the lamb coming out of this facility accounted for 20% of our domestic production.
Alas, Mountain States Rosen had the misfortune of being neighbors with JBS.
For those unaware, JBS is one of the largest meat companies in the world, and is based in Brazil. It has a long history of extreme corruption, with its billionaire brother CEOs serving jail time for bribing more than 1,800 Brazilian politicians. (They’ve also bribed politicians in America, too. More to come on that in upcoming posts)
Back to the story~ Mountain States Rosen was paying off its mortgage when out of the blue its bank, CoBank- asked for all of the debt to be repaid right away. This was not possible for a small cooperative of farmers, and they immediately declared bankruptcy. The processing plant was then sold at auction for pennies on the dollar of what it was actually worth. The buyer was- you guessed it, JBS.
So why had CoBank, a bank that’s mission is to serve other cooperatives, suddenly put this cooperative of farmers out of business? The answer is not yet publicly known, however, JBS is also a client of CoBank. The farmers who got shut down believe that JBS pressured CoBank to foreclose on Mountain States Rosen. It certainly makes sense…
JBS is the largest importer of lamb into America.
Once they bought the Mountain States Rosen plant, they promptly shut it down for sheep.
This led to a contraction of sheep raised in our country, and led to an increase in imported lamb. And thus fattened the bank accounts of one of the most corrupt multinationals in the world.
This is why, we as citizens of America, must buy food directly from our farmers.
If we don’t, we soon will not be able to feed ourselves.
To make a short film about this one story, I drove across America- from Vermont to Utah twice to film with affected rancher Carson Jorgensen. Once in the winter of 2022, and again in the spring of 2023. I filmed at the former Mountain States Rosen plant (now JBS plant) in Greeley spring of 2023 as well. Hired someone local to film Carson loading sheep in the summer of 2022. For this one story, I also drove from Massachusetts to Maryland and filmed with journalist Claire Kelloway at the end of 2020. I write this not to make anyone feel bad about my sacrifice, or to make me out to be some kind of hero. I’m not and it’s not a sacrifice because I enjoy this work, in fact I love to do it. It’s part of my life’s calling. I am sharing these production details as a reminder of how much money, and more importantly how much time it takes for our very small production company to do this kind of reporting- this kind of independent filmmaking about agriculture.
So for those of you who are paid subscribers- thank you so so much. You make this work possible. Please scroll down to enjoy the rough short film (it’s not finished yet) about the takeover of Mountain States Rosen by JBS.
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best thoughts,
Graham
