AG Squawk with Jed Sidwell | Cattle Markets at High Noon

We take the markets by the horns at high noon, mixing big picture economics with what’s moving grains, cattle, and hogs right now. We also zoom out on America through the World Cup lens before zooming back in on beef exports, tight cattle supplies, and what weather could do next. 
• Corn and soybeans ripping higher on a weather market 
• French corn condition slide and why global heat matters 
• Beef export sales shock and why backdated numbers spook traders 
• Feeder cattle swings and cash-to-futures premium watching 
• Heavy cattle weights, replacement pain, and what limits expansion 
• Pasture conditions in eastern Colorado and the High Plains 
• Summer grilling demand, protein trends, and recession chatter 
• National Weather Service outlook for storms, flooding, and heat 
May I direct you, beloved viewer, to Agbull.com where you can dig in deeper with AgBull Intel. Take the markets by the horns with AgBull. Visit Agbull.com or call 855-737-Farm. 

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Futures Trading involves risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Past profits are not necessarily indicative of future results/profits. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Corn, soybeans, and wheat are off to a great start today. Cattle and hogs are mixed as we roll tape right here at high noon on July 6th, 2026.

Midday Market Snapshot

SPEAKER_02 0:12

We're gonna turn our focus to the cattles with one of the best. Ooh, and we've got our first piece of tape from the Ag Bull Glee Club. From behind the big blue, bodaceous microphone of Ag Bull. It's your pal Davis Michelson, the handsome newsman here with you from the Ultimate Man Cave in Kansas City, USA. Hope you had a great time over the weekend celebrating our nation's 250th birthday. Birthday, anniversary, the anniversary of our birth, you might say. Anywho, hope everyone had had a chance to not only, you know, rock out, party down, get down and party out, but also to think about uh America and what what this place has become, what it was intended to be, however those two match up in your own mind. Really, we've got it pretty good here, folks. I'm gonna talk with my guest about that just a little bit. I've seen some stuff on YouTube and and I want to talk about it. A few quick data points before we bring in our guest. First off, according to SP Global, the U.S. Service Purchasing Manager's Index, that's the PMI, and the U.S. composite PMI came in below expectations.

World Cup Changes How We See America

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Not by much, but below expectations is good. Looking over to the jobs side, the unemployment rate actually fell to 4.2%. But that wasn't because people got jobs. The labor participation rate actually dropped three-tenths of a percent to 61.5%. That's the lowest since early 2021. People left the labor force, they did not get hired. So that's not necessarily the best sign. Not quite what we were looking for there, but unemployment rate down to 4.2%. And really quick, Tommy specifically asked me to do this, and I'm and I'm happy to do it. I've got an Ag Squawk shout-out.

unknown 2:16

Come on.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Right from the jump here, Ron from Nebraska. Ag squawk shout out to Ron. It's great to have you on board, brother. Shout out. Come on. With that, let me bring in Judge Jed Sidwell. Jed, we're here to talk about cattles and whatnot, but uh let's talk about America for just a second. The World Cup is here in the United States. Here in Kansas City, it's been like for a year now. They've been talking about World Cup, World Cup. There's gonna be people from all over the world, and they're coming here for the cup and the world and the cup. And it's there was a lot of buildup, and at some point we were sort of like, okay, is it time for the World Cup already? Enough already. This thing is really, really cool in a way that I didn't expect. I'm seeing shorts, I'm seeing little videos on YouTube from people from Europe and from other places around the world saying, Wow, America is not what we have been told at home. This place is really great. Jedwell, I didn't expect uh to hear that sort of a report, and it gives me a new appreciation for how good we've got it. They've just talked about air conditioning. You know, you walk into a building and it's cold and they're stunned. How do they do this? Jed, I don't know. I'd be lost without my air conditioning.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Welcome to the show, brother. Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Davis. I'm super excited to be on. It's fun to watch. I've been in the background kind of helping run things, you know, because I'm part of the Ag Bull team here, and so it's been a lot of fun, but it's been like dangling the carrot in front of the horse. Maybe I'll have my chance to come on here at some point. And and I do, and it's certainly going to be a blast, I think. But yeah, man, my Instagram reels. I'm not a TikTok TikTok man as much as I am on Instagram, and they have been full of people from the outside of the U.S. just loving America, and it is really cool to see. I know that like US Customs or the TSA has like slightly adjusted their uh fluid size on which you can take out of the country because everyone keeps on folding their suitcases full of ranch, which as living in the Midwest as I do currently, I completely get because man, there's not much that we don't eat with ranch out here. Uh and so that's really cool to see. And man, when I landed in Denver for the 4th of July, and because I'm from Colorado, we were walking through to the trains, if you know the Denver airport, and right around the train area, the whole thing is erupted and cheering and yelling, and it was when team USA scored a goal there. That's really cool to see. I can't remember maybe I just haven't been in the airport when the big sporting event is going on. I'm sure I have, but I I can't remember a time when the whole place is just erupted like that.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

Yeah, yeah. Well, and you mentioned it too, Jed. You and I work together. You might recognize Jed, beloved viewer, uh, from the morning edition of Ag Squawk. Jed, how long you've been doing that?

SPEAKER_00 5:09

You know, we started last week. We

Farming In 250 Years Song

SPEAKER_00 5:11

did a lot of practice and trial runs before that. And if you're on our premium side, I'll give that a shout out. Uh I make our give an agile shout out to the premium side. I do our Mike Sands video every morning. I record that and do a weekly conversation with him. Also have Tom Leffler on from time to time. So if you've seen me before, so in the background behind those two gentlemen, they do a great job uh of breaking down all the markets and the cattle in particular.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

Well, and if if you watching at home like like what I'm doing here in the afternoon and what we've got rolling, we have Jed to thank uh he and I for about a month before we actually hit the big red button and went live with this program. He and I were trying ideas and trying to figure out how to make the cameras work and all the all the different things. So, Jed, we uh definitely owe you a debt of gratitude here on the on the afternoon ag squawk side, brother.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Oh, there's no problem at all. It was fun doing some of those test trials, playing around with the the music and the videos and all the things that we can do in this platform, especially with the power of video. It's a lot of fun. It gives us a lot of freedom.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Yeah, yeah, it really does. Okay, and I and I brought you in because I want to talk to you about cattle because you've got some serious expertise there. We'll get to get to more of the details on all of that a little bit later on in the program. I wanted to bring something up. Tommy hosted the morning show on Thursday last week. And something he he talked about got me thinking. He opined what agriculture might look like in 250 years. And I thought it might be a good time to bring in the Ag Bull Glee Club with a musical number on the subject. Let me uh let me go ahead and roll that tape.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Maybe finally get that brand new fly and pickup truck. Walk around in silver suits with matching silver boots. It'll be like Star Trek on the farm in 250 years. In 250 years of planters, duplicate themselves, automaticate fails, that's back without your help. Never come back to all the need to scoop my door. Farm without the blisters or cold ears, in two hundred and fifty.

SPEAKER_02 8:05

Wow, the first entry from the Ag Bull Glee Club. Two hundred and fifty years. You know, it would be great to have a planner that lubricates itself, hay bales that stack themselves without any help, no blisters, no cold ears. Jed, I'm you know, I'm with them on everything except maybe the silver suits with the matching shiny boots, but that's how they always show people in the future.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

I know that's that's kind of what we what we picture, I guess. I think I kind of recognize maybe one of the vocalists there in the Glee Club, but maybe we'll shine some light on that uh someday.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

Maybe one day we'll find out who those mystery vocalists are, and uh I don't know where these guys came from, but uh I'm anxious to hear, I'm anxious to hear more. Speaking of Tommy G, for for you Ag Bull subscribers, Tommy just hit me with the text. He's gonna run through crop conditions this afternoon for you.

Why Ag Squawk Stays Free

SPEAKER_02 8:58

If you're not an AgBull subscriber, let me urge you to check out all the info available, the AgBull Intel, we call it, at Agbol.com or call 855-737 Farm. Now, uh Jed, we love our premium subscribers, of course, but but really we're glad to be here for everybody on the free side as well as we are now. There are others who who will say, you know, they're out there and and they'll just say it openly that they don't care about the free side. That's that's not how how we roll here. There's extra information. You can get the closes and you know, all sorts of stuff throughout the day on the premium side. But man, we're we're happy to uh to bring at least a a taste and and some of the most important information that we can here on the free side. Jed, your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Yeah, I mean that's kind of why we created Ag Squawk, Davis, was to put out a consistent product to the general public that provides informational content, but yet be interesting and fun and kind of sell our brand at the same time. Also, on the speaking of free, the things that you can get for free, if you go to our website, Mr. Wiesmeyer stuff is all up there. Just go ahead and click around and you can find it.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

Yeah, Jim Wiesmeyer's stuff. And and it's he's prolific. The guy just he doesn't have an off switch. If you're curious about something going on on the policy side, Wiesmeyer definitely has you covered there. All right, Jed, let's get into the markets a little bit. Corn and soybean futures rocketed higher this morning, right at the open. Corn up 13 to 15 cents early, and beans adding 35 to 37. Wheat was a little bit quieter.

Weather Market Ignites Grains

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Jed, I think we've got a full-blown weather market in progress here. Forecasters calling for hot and dry weather over the next two weeks. The French corn crop baking in record heat. And this this is kind of why I brought up the European thing, too, how they're astonished with the air conditioning. Apparently, because of the electrical setup or prices of electricity, I don't quite understand it, but uh they don't have air conditioning over there, and and they're suffering through some record heat. And the news is that the French corn crop is really, really starting to suffer. The good to excellent condition rating drops 26 points in the past two weeks to a reading of 58%. Good to excellent. That's no good, Jed.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

No, yeah, no way no at all. We talked about that this morning on Ag Squawk AM just a little bit. It's a different market from ours, obviously. It's the European market, different sets of buyers, and most of it gets used internally over there for the most part. But like we talked about, and maybe our our key phrase that we love to coin when we're talking about markets is that a rising tide brings up all ships. And if one product is worth more, or if there's a demand somewhere else, it creates a man a demand for our product as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Indeed. By the way, in 1949, it was actually on this date, July 6th. I'm I'm skipping ahead a little bit to items of mild interest. This is actually pretty interesting. A freak heat wave sent the central coast of Portugal to 158 degrees Fahrenheit for exactly two minutes. That was back in 1949. So they can definitely get some heat going over there. Currently, we're just after, we're right at 12:30 central time, noon 30. Looks like corn holding on to gains up uh 14-15 cents. Soybeaners, look at this up 46 cents. There's the the Jan up 45. Looking out at the uh NOVE 46 cents higher. Meal and oil both storming higher. The wheat market up double digits, September Chicago up 15 and a quarter, presently here at 6.15 even, and the September KC up 11 and three quarter cents. Heck of a run in the grains uh so far this week, Jeb.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah, they exploded higher last night, Davis, especially corn and beans, right off a huge jump on pretty much all the contracts, and it continued overnight into this morning, and as we're recording, everything's green right now. Man, it we've been waiting for this a little while, especially on the corn side of things, and I think that's trading off with some weather, especially through the corn belt in the upper Midwest, where we've seen some flooding. Now, obviously, there's a large large portion of the country that's in some drought areas, and I don't want to leave them out of the picture as well, because that certainly affects the market. But man, if it's underwater, it's dang hard to harvest it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

I've been keeping an eye on these markets today and every day. I've been watching the markets on plus 500. We use plus 500 T4 software every day for real-time quotes and more. That's plus 500. Lean hog futures were mildly lower to open the day presently at uh 12 30 central time. According to plus 500, we're we're posting. Well, you look out to the October and we're up 82 and a half cents. The D's at 95 cents, a little little closer to home. August at uh 7.5 cents higher at 98.82 and one half that according to plus 500. Okay. Cattle futures were mixed at the open. Feeders kind of fell back while fat cattle gained a couple of dimes. It wasn't long though, Jed, before feeders found a path into positive territory.

Beef Exports Reported Late And Inflated

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Fed cattle added to early gains, and then, as near as I can tell, inexplicably, feeder cattle, just an hour later, we're back in the red. Let's, you know what? I want to start on the demand side, and I don't know how much time we need to spend on this because this is sort of nutty. It may still be a developing situation, but beef export sales were looking pretty sporty at a record high. But then word came in that a bunch of those exports were reported late and kind of skewed the true updated number. Can you help me get my head around what's going on with the uh with the beef export number?

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Yeah, the total number came somewhere like 126 metric tons or million metric tons or something like that of total exports. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely insane. But then it comes out that maybe some of those numbers are backdated, a majority of which, somewhere like 110 or 111, are old numbers that they never actually updated into the system, which makes you just a little wary of what we have. And then I thought it was really interesting to pop up this chart here that came out through our Nesvik newswire this morning. That Italy number, if you look at right there, 3.7 times bigger than their normal number, that amount of imports is approaching the total number of imports for the whole European Union. I mean, if that's the case that those your Italians are eating that much beef, man, I'm for it. Hop on the bandwagon all game. I probably eat that much beef, probably fair more, way more than your average Italian. But I find it rather unrealistic that that it's that high. Maybe it is. It'd be really optimistic if it were. But I I have kind of cold feet right now, Davis.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

So, and I know that the situation is very difficult to predict. It's unfair of me to ask you this. Just just tell me you don't know if if you're not sure, but are these numbers now, I mean, they're out there, or should we expect to see maybe some reductions in future reports to try and and make up the balance here? Any idea?

SPEAKER_00 16:15

I think it's something we definitely have to have on our radar just a little bit. When we see big numbers or different numbers that are way different than the expected trend, normally the following report, there's some sort of correction or some sort of hiccup in the number that causes it to kind of reset. I would be probably expecting that in the next report. But at the same time, I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know the future, the future of everything. Past profits are not indicative of future results. Go ahead and throw that one out there for compliance. So yeah, that's kind of where my head's at right now.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

All right, all right. Well, let's let's get a little closer to home. You you know that I've been watching the cash cattle market and its relationship, it's premium to futures. August fat cattle technically appeared to be a little oversold

Cattle Supply Tightness And High Costs

SPEAKER_02 17:04

to me, bumping up against some support around the 100-day moving average. Presently, if we look at the August, we are unchanged according to plus 500 at 360, 62 and a half. The SEPT down 62 and a half at 357.85. That's your those are your feeder cattles. And then over to the Fats, the October at 80 cents higher on the day thus far, as of 1230 this afternoon, 235.10. Look at the August up 30 cents, 239, 57 and 12 now, just ticked a little bit higher. Talk to me about the present market setup here, Jed.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

It's interesting. We have what we've talked about for a long time, uh a large front-end supply of fat cattle right now because they're so hard to replace once we lose them. We're feeding them to higher and higher weights, and that's obviously been a huge discussion in the cattle world for a long time. We've actually seen a slight decrease in weights recently, but still 30 pounds or so ahead of last year on the steer side of things. That's huge. I mean, percent change, that is a large increase from last year. And at some point we're going to reach the s the ceiling of what a steer can weigh and send to harvest successfully. So we only have a little bit more up there that I think we can go. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe genomics will make me look silly here in the future. But right now, heavyweight cattle, we have a lot of them that are ready to kill, and we're having a hard time replacing them. Not because there aren't feeder cattle available, we still have a shortage there, but there's opportunities to buy. They are just so dang expensive and they're really hard to pencil right now, Davis.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

You were out, you went, you went back home for the uh the big holiday for the fourth weekend, out to Sidwell territory in the flat, would you call it? Is it the high plains or just the flat part of Colorado?

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Yeah, it's kind of yeah, the the high desert part of Colorado. I like to explain to people we live in the flat, boring part of the state. We have the nice mountains in the background, but we don't have really anything cool unless you're really into cattle or corn. We have a lot of center pivots and a lot of feed yards and dairies where I'm at there.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

So pasture conditions,

Pasture Conditions And Summer Beef Demand

SPEAKER_02 19:12

and you know, we're a backyard itis approved zone here at Hag Squawk. With your observation on pasture conditions.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Man, a lot better than they were three months ago. I will say that much. We have been fortunate to catch some scattered rains here and there. We're not in the sheer fire risk. Obviously, Utah sending prayers to them and the big fires that they've seen over there. And it was dang smoky when I was back home, Davis. But in kind of the front range where I'm at, into the panhandle of Nebraska and western Kansas, things look better than they did. The grass isn't tall, but it's there. We shipped cows last week, which is norm later than we normally do. A lot of folks, yeah, pushed them back a little ways there to kind of stretch the grass as long as we can. We'll see. Hopefully, we can catch some kind of scattered showers here into July.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Consumer demand does seem to be holding up, but we've crossed a major summertime grilling milestone here, Jed. You can talk seasonally, you can talk historically, you can tell me what your gut tells you. Demand moving forward through the rest of the summer.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Yeah. I mean, it we it's a premium product. Beef has always been known for being the most palatable palatable of kind of the major meat products, and it always probably will be, I think, as long as we kind of maintain the same diets that we do, and where we're so protein-centric right now, there is a lot of demand for beef. And this is the time of year to have it. I think it'll hold on into summer and late fall. We don't see as quite as the seasonal spikes as maybe we once did 20 years ago. There's still some there, obviously, but demand is holding fairly consistent. As we push into uses of GLP1s, we need more proteins. People like a good steak. If you go to a steakhouse and you serve me chicken, I'd be a little disappointed. Obviously, when times get tough, and maybe if people are starting to whisper recession, there's times that other proteins get used. But right now, I'm pretty confident that demand will hold from a consumer aspect on the cattle side.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

You mentioned, and I've I've noticed as well, you you spend a decent amount of time in contact with Mike Sands. Does does does he highlight any overarching major concerns with the cattle market at all that you can pick up on?

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Does he seem nervous to you? No, I mean Mike doesn't seem service nervous about anything, so I should put that one out there. That guy is steadfast, calm, cool, and collected every time I talk to him, and that's what makes it so much fun. And yeah, I talk to him every week on on our Fat Tuesday show, but then every day you can get Mike Sands at before the bell there. And yeah, Mike's the thing that we talk about all the time is that we haven't increased our supply. Of cattle at all. And it takes a lot to do it. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of feed. Luckily, feed's cheap right now, but interest rates are still pretty dang high. I think we're gonna have to see a decrease in interest rates before we can justify building back a herd because it's fine in practice and to say, yeah, we're just gonna keep back more heifers, it costs something to run those every year.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

Absolutely, it does. All right. Well, I appreciate you running down the cattle market for us and for us sort of speculating on Mike Sands's current state of mind. It seems like he's doing fine. Seems like you're doing pretty well too. Let's talk about the weather. According to the National Weather Service, moisture and nearby frontal boundary will focus more showers and thunderstorms for portions of the mid-Atlantic and northeast

Storms Heat And Items Of Interest

SPEAKER_02 22:44

today. Rainfall could be locally heavy, resulting in instances of flash flooding. Meanwhile, heat lingers for areas of the southeast and expands across the western U.S. for the next several days. Between those areas, severe thunderstorms possible for the plains and the Midwest. Jed, with that, let's get to some items of mild interest. 1699 on this date in history, July 6th. The pirate and outlaw, Captain Kidd was captured in Boston in 1885. Louis Pasteur successfully gives an anti-rabies vaccine to nine-year-old Joseph Meister, saving his life. You know, my little brother uh had to get the rabies shots. Have you ever had to have the rabies shots, Jed?

SPEAKER_00 23:31

No, I came in pretty close contact with a bat once, but I evaded him. So yeah, I'm all safe there.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

All right, excellent. I can't imagine, like, because my little brother had to have like 10 shots over a couple of weeks or something like that. I wonder what it was like, you know, to save a kid's life in 1885 with this. Like, how many shots did that kid have to have?

SPEAKER_00 23:51

Yeah, back before we had modern medicine. I'm sure that was a fairly scary, scary ordeal.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

I would think, I would think, and finally here, uh, this date in 1994, Forr Gump, directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, and Gary Sinise, was released. It won the Academy Awards Best Picture in 1995. Well, Jed said, well, thanks so much for for being on here, for talking to us about what you do. Um, you you're doing a great job with the morning show and keeping things together. Um, and I know you're having

Where To Follow And Closing

SPEAKER_02 24:28

a darn good time doing it. Is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Yeah, it's fun. I wake up in the morning and I get a kind of have a kind of kick in the pants to get some adrenaline going and have the morning show. Then I'm fired up for the rest of the morning and it really gets me going and I enjoy it. So yeah, tune in every morning. Try and have it out by 7.30-ish or so if I'm if I'm prompt about it.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

So atta boy, attaboy, Sidwell, everybody. My compadre from Ag Bull and Nesvik. May I direct you, beloved viewer, to Agbol.com where you can dig in deeper with AgBull Intel. Take the markets by the horns with Ag Bull. Visit Agbol.com or call 855-737 Farm. 855-737 Farm for the details. Premium subscribers, make sure to check in with the website after the close as Tommy's gonna talk crop conditions for you. I'll be back tomorrow afternoon. Ooh, with her royal hemisphere, April Hemis, right here on Ag Squawk.