AG Squawk AM 8/21/2026 with Jed Sidwell | A Truth Social Post Could Rattle the Cattle Market Today

We start the morning with a fast, usable snapshot of cattle, hog, and grain markets, then shift to a hotter, drier forecast that could change late-season yield ideas. We also read President Trump’s ground beef import announcement and explain why it could matter for cattle prices and rebuilding the U.S. herd.
• live cattle, feeder cattle, and lean hog performance from the prior close
• corn, soybeans, and Chicago wheat levels with a choppy overnight tone
• renewed Southern Plains heat and dryness and what it signals for risk
• warmer turn in parts of the Corn Belt and why localized weather still rules
• ProFarmer Crop Tour implied yield drop and the potential production impact
• Trump’s tariff-free ground beef import plan and our concerns on market share
• why importing more beef may conflict with rebuilding the domestic cow herd
• chart of the day on Moderna, Merck, and links to ag pharma
• key calendar items including PMI data and the Cattle on Feed report
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Transcript

Welcome And Why Today Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Good morning and welcome to Ag Squawk AM. Jed Sidwell here with Ag Bull Media. This is the morning show that you need to start your day. And for good reason, this morning, too, we have a truth social post from President Trump this morning that'll be sending some shock waves into the cattle market. We'll talk about that and more here in a bit.

Overnight Futures And Cash Snapshot

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Live cattle closed at 218 even, up three-quarters of a buck. Feeder cattle were down 20 cents at 329.13. Lean hogs were down about $1.28 at $80 and a quarter. Quoting the markets here live with our quotes from T4 from plus $500. That's the trading software we use. We trust plus $500 for real-time quotes. Corn new crop is at $5.2.5 this morning. Beans September contractor at $12.17. And SEP Chicago wheat is at $6.77 and three-quarters.

Weather Turns Hotter And Drier

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Man, kind of a choppy overnight with no uh real particular direction set by any of the grains. On the weather side of things, we've actually seen maybe a bit of a reversal in some things that we've been talking about. Severe heat and dryness is reinstated across the southern plains. We thought we were gonna see, you know, maybe a heat break there, but there's gonna be 100-plus highs and below normal rainfall locked in for the next 15 days down there, unfortunately. Hate to see it. It turns notably warmer than prior forecasts, especially in the southwestern corn belt. They're gonna be five degrees above normal and kind of reversing the cooler trend we thought we were gonna see there. That's maybe not a bad thing, though, to kind of help some of these fields dry out into Indiana and places like that.

Crop Tour Yield Cuts And Local Variability

SPEAKER_00 2:20

On the grain market discussion for today, we're wrapping up the grow the ProFarmer Crop Tour, and this was kind of their summary sheet that they put together. The seven state implied yields from the USDA's 197.8 kind of is down to 187.1 bushels, cutting the production by roughly 600 million bushels. That's 3.7% of the U.S.'s crop, with Illinois and Iowa, the two states carrying the USDA's near record August yields, accounting for most of the damage. It'll be interesting to see as we actually get out in these fields what we're seeing. Obviously, the the crop tour is a good estimate. They look at a lot of fields and bring in a lot of data, but at the same time, if you've been farming for long, you realize that weather is highly localized and it can be very different two miles down the road from what it looks like at your place. I know we see that back home in Colorado quite a bit. On to the livestock discussion for today that I alluded to earlier.

Trump Post On Beef Imports

SPEAKER_00 3:26

This morning, President Trump had a truth social post that he let out, and I'll go ahead and read it for you folks here briefly. Today I concluded a deal to substantially lower the price of ground beef for working American families. As everyone knows, under President Biden, beef prices soared at their fastest rate, and the American beef herd fell to its smallest size in modern history. As we work to rebuild this herd and help our ranchers for the next 90 days, the United States will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported with no out-of-quota tariff. We have a commitment that this beef deal will be sold at twenty-five percent below current market prices. This deal will reduce prices for Americans while giving space for the great American beef herd to grow again. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. A lot to digest

Why More Imports Could Hurt Ranchers

SPEAKER_00 4:18

there. Here's my main takeaway here in a f bit. The imports scare me just a little bit there. It's concerning that to think we're going to solve this problem by importing more beef from outside the United States. That takes away from our market. We've already been giving up our foothold there to outside countries, and if we do that, I doubt that the answer will be yeah, we're going to be able to regrow the cow herd by letting other countries come in and sell more of their grinds. Obviously, still a low-value product, but if we give them an inch, they can take a mile. Interesting post this morning. We'll see what it does to the market here in a bit.

Premium Alerts And Market Coverage

SPEAKER_00 4:59

And the best way to stay informed with what's happening, I highly encourage you to subscribe to our premium side of things. If you go there, you'll get text updates as soon as you subscribe with what's going on in the market. I think yesterday Tommy sent out five or six because we saw just a ton of action yesterday with access to premium videos. Tommy and I did a premium video for you, you folks that are subscribed. I hope you enjoyed that one. We were able to kind of uh make a pretty good analysis of the market.

Chart Of The Day And Pharma Link

SPEAKER_00 5:28

The chart of the day caught my eye because their companies, or one of them is that's kind of on the livestock side of things. Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine hit its phase three primary endpoint paired with Merck's Keitruda. It sent up Moderna 177%. Merck still had a good update at 12.6% on Wednesday. Moderna gave some of that back around 25% yesterday. But nearly the they're both nearly the same on what their market value is, but their share price for Moderna went up way more. It'll be interesting to see if this means that Merck is just heavily undervalued or Moderna is just way too undervalued. It's interesting to follow these because these companies also hold a large stake in the ag pharmaceutical business.

Economic Calendar And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 6:18

On the economic calendar for today, the SP Global Services Manufacturing PMI comes out at 8 45 a.m. Central. The Catalon Feed Report comes out after the close at 2. We'll see if it kind of aligns with what Mr. Mike Sands has been talking about. I'm pretty confident it will. On to our social medias. Make sure and follow us there. Like we talked about in earlier episodes. It's a good way to sample kind of the shows that we put out and get the highlights and say, man, I really think this guest would be interesting. I'm going to go ahead and watch this one. We had Kip Tom on yesterday. For those of you that are complaining, and I don't blame you, that the USDA does a bad, slow job gathering data. He's the guy trying to fix that problem, and we had a great episode with him yesterday. Well, I'm running long today, but I had a lot to bring up. I highly encourage you to go on and subscribe to our premium site at AgBull.com. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week here on AgSquawk AM, Jed Siddhall with AgBull Media, where a financial channel that loves agriculture. Have a great day.