AG Bull
Tommy Grisafi is the main host and content creator for Ag Bull Media.
The Ag Bull Podcast showcases agriculture's top talents in a long-form video format. The Ag Bull Trading Podcast is a deeper discussion of trading with analysts and key players in agriculture nationwide.
AG Bull
Jed Sidwell Cattle Judge
Jed Sidwell shares his journey from Colorado cattle country to a Nashville trading internship, bridging traditional agricultural skills with modern financial markets.
• Summer intern at Nesvick Trading from Gill, Colorado
• Background in custom harvesting, raising cattle and sheep for 4-H/FFA projects
• Collegiate livestock judging competitor at Butler Community College
• Currently completing finance degree at Oklahoma State University
• Explained livestock judging competitions and their value in developing decision-making skills
• Discussed trading experience and learning market influences beyond cash fundamentals
• Observed challenges in agriculture including water rights issues and rising interest rates
• Planning to pursue Series 3 license and explore career options in commodities trading
• Continues judging livestock shows while connecting show animals to market reality
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Thank you, Tommy G
welcome back to the egg bowl podcast. I'm your host, tommy grisafi, sitting here with young jed sidwell. He's from gill colorado. He's nesvik trading summer intern and I've gotten to know jed a little bit this summer and he's got a different background. But I think people in agriculture will enjoy it, jed, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, Tommy. It's been a fun summer so far.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, who wouldn't want to be going back to their senior year in college and live down in Nashville? But tell people how you ended up with us over at NASVIC.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've worked for some people in Colorado at a feed yard the Gable family at Magnum Feed Yard since high school. Good family friends out here and they had some connections with NASVICs and Brian Leith and said, yeah, this would be a great place to come and learn, learn some tools of the trade and just, not to mention, have an interesting experience having a good time in a great place to come and learn, uh, learn some tools of the trade and just, uh, not to mention, have an interesting experience having a good time, uh, in a fun place absolutely well, we loved having you here.
Speaker 1:You helped me build. Uh, we took that empty office and built that podcast studio. We're actually uh sitting in there right now. Now, we didn't turn the cameras on today, but, uh, we'll. We'll have more chances to do that. Maybe sometime we can go live. When are you going to be judging again?
Speaker 2:I got a few County fairs coming up. I got the Larimer or Albany County fair in Laramie, wyoming, and then I got the Larimer County or County, which is in Wyoming but in Cheyenne, where that one's at a little bit of a confusing deal there, uh, but two cattle shows, uh steers at one of them. Um should be a good time. Um got some more on the books for later in the year, um, but we'll see how that goes so young.
Speaker 1:Jed went to butler community college, but you grew up in gill colorado. What's? What's it like in gill colorado?
Speaker 2:you know it's about an hour north of denver and I tell everybody I come from the boring part of the state.
Speaker 2:But if you're a fan of ag it's kind of a cool little place there because there's a lot of center pivot irrigation that goes on and the driving force behind all that is the JBS packing plant and Leprino Foods cheese plant right there in Greeley. So there's a lot of feed yards and a lot of dairies close by. We're a net import area for corn. So the main reason we have those center pivots to grow roughage hay and corn silage and that's what my family does. We own a custom harvesting operation where we chop a bunch of silage in the fall through the summer and stuff put up a bunch of hay as well. And then, yeah, what I kind of grew up doing is we run about 70 head of cows and about 120 sheep right now, kind of mostly for the purpose for youth to use for 4-H and FFA projects, but luckily, kind of my parents used them to teach my brother and I kind of how to be stockmen and how to grow up the right way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're having fun with that too. And so you went to Butler Community College and you go to Oklahoma State University. That's a pretty big ag school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can do livestock judging at the university level for only two years, so the fast 40, 50 years. What kids have done is go on scholarship at a community college, compete at the junior college level for two years and then get recruited to go to one of those university places. So out of high school I got my name pushed around a little bit and I got to go tour a bunch of places for junior college but went to Butler Community College. My coach there would have been Taylor Frank, had a great time. Small town of Eldorado, kansas, a really cool place to kind of I don't know for a country bumpkin like me to be out at school, but not too, not too big of a town and not too big of a class size either. Was a good way for me to start out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting. Now what's with the whole two year deal? Why only two years?
Speaker 2:Well, it's just an associate's degree there, um, and yeah, the judging schedule only happens in a full calendar year, um, so, yeah, by doing it, the junior college level, you kind of get a I don't know, almost like, uh, the minor leagues in baseball. You get to go play for a few years and then, before you go up to the big leagues, oh, I see what's going on here and you and I were talking off air.
Speaker 1:We said livestock judging. Tell me more about that. What's that mean, to be a livestock judge?
Speaker 2:It happens at the youth level and it happens collegiately. All contests mostly look the same Four species of livestock cattle, swine, sheep and goats. The goats have obviously kind of been a recent addition, but it's four animals in a pen and your goal is just to rank them and then go throughout the day by yourself, going class from class, ranking all these livestock and then those get scored based off in a group of industry professionals that are the officials for the day. But the cool part about it is that at the end of the day, still without talking to anybody, you have to go and give a set of reasonings, oral reasons, on why you did what you did and defend your thinking and logic for why you placed the class. I think that's really the valuable part of it is defending what you think.
Speaker 1:And how big a business is this livestock judging?
Speaker 2:You know, it's just a really cool tool. There's not really like careers tied to it, but a lot of successful business people have come through this program. There's a lot of agricultural businesses that have come and spoke to us at Oklahoma State and say they're looking for livestock, judging kids a lot of the time just because their ability to make decisions.
Speaker 1:So it's a valuable thing, I think, for kids and young people to grow up doing, absolutely. We have our program Fair going on right now in Valparaiso, indiana, the Porter County Fair, and that should be exciting. We they have a big animal show there. I you said your your girlfriend's involved in this also, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, she would have gone to Joliet Junior College, which is just south of Chicago, and then for senior college she went to Kansas State and she was actually a member of the national champion team there, so that was kind of cool for her. But yeah, she got hired back to Joliet and she's going to start this fall as their livestock judging coach there.
Speaker 1:Well, that's pretty exciting. And so you go from living out in Colorado, out in the country, to living in Nashville. How'd that all come about?
Speaker 2:Oh, uh, just uh, like I talked about the connections I had, uh, with the Magnum feed yard and the Gable family. Uh, yeah, they just sent my resume over, um, talked to Brian a little bit and said he'd love to have me out, uh, out. Luckily I have some family out here that I'm living with this summer, so that's been a lot of fun as well. But yeah, I've learned a lot this summer, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:What have you learned on the trading floor? I know you're watching all these guys trade and broker and everything else.
Speaker 2:I think the key part is just always be in tune, have the best research by your side, talk to other people, see what they're thinking. The power of communication is really, really important. I know I've learned more at some of the dinners and the evenings, a lot of the time just from guys bouncing around ideas, past experiences that they've had. It's really the stories I think I learned from the most.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:uh, you've spent some days in memphis also yep, um, what hung out with the crew out there for a week? Um, yeah, I got to talk to some of those people as well. Ashley, who you had on just the other day uh, hung out with her. She's really really sharp and cool to talk to as well what about this?
Speaker 1:uh, I hear you guys joking around the office. You got some simulated trading contest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we just wrapped up our trading simulation that we had going on. The CME group has that trading simulator, so me and a couple of the guys in the office, just for fun on the side, had a little bet going on and the loser had to buy bourbon steak, which is one of the fancier steak houses here and nashville, the finest wine and dine of all the wines and dines around here. Um, so that kind of kept me really locked in this summer. I didn't want to lose that and, yeah, spend all my intern dollars away who, uh, who won it actually?
Speaker 2:uh, jerry actually ended up winning it. Uh, if you count my copper trade, I won it, but I didn't count that well, that copper trade.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a big moving copper, moved up like 14 in just a few minutes. That was uh a little much. Well, yeah, there's some uh crazy things going on. The uh. We blew up the interweb yesterday with the uh. Uh, the couple of the cold play, that Coldplay. They made X great again. It's good to see social media rolling. Coldplay's coming down to Nashville. It's got all types of people giggling. What else did you learn here around the office besides what's blown up on X and what's going on in markets?
Speaker 2:I've really learned the power of social media that it has in the market. Obviously, we had that scare with Screwworm there for a while. Fake news that came out and immediately got turned down but I mean had drastic, drastic effects on the market. Same thing with the southern border down there. Big changes there. Anytime Trump tweets something, really having your ear to the ground is super important there. Anytime Trump tweets something, really having your ear to the ground is super important there. You know, I always told myself it's just going to follow cash always. But that's not the case A lot of the time. A lot of the time it's all these external indicators coming in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the futures market doesn't necessarily go tick for tick with the cash market. They can definitely vary. There's never been more of an exciting time in cattle, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the broad new frontier that we have here. It's fun times. It's cool to be in Nashville when all this is going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's an annual cattle show, what's it called Cattle Con? Yep, that's going to be in Nashville this year and next year, so hopefully you can come back for that. I know we have a booth there. If anyone intends on coming to that, look us up. We'll have to get those dates for when. That is what else? You helped me a lot with media this summer.
Speaker 2:Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I didn't think I'd be Jamie from Joe Rogan this summer, but that's what I've ended up being for Tommy a lot of time. But it's been a lot of fun learning about lighting and effects and stuff like that and just learning how the sausage is made, what goes into production. I joked around with some people back home. Man, I almost kind of wished I had like a communications background at times, but it's been fun to learn, definitely something I wasn't expecting. But I'm not complaining at all. It's been a blast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we went over to RFD TV yesterday and I had to sub in for my friend Scott the Cow Guy. That was fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I got to watch Tommy over there on live television. That was super cool to see. That's a big outfit they have there different energy, like recording this right now.
Speaker 1:It's recorded, we'll box it up and publish it here. It's saturday afternoon. We'll have this out here just in a little bit, but just having a conversation day with uh jed sidwell. He's a young man from gill, colorado. He's attending oklah State University, loves to judge cattle, summer intern here at NESVIC and we're wrapping down the summer. I always feel maybe I'm getting old, but after July 4th things start to go on the down low and it's time to gear up. Have a few more fun weekends and then the college kids go back to school, usually around August 15th, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:That's not that far away. Not that far away. We attended some good concerts this summer. We went to some fun places. Of course you know Broadway. It's just right down the street and that's always going. Did you make it to the Breitman Theater at all?
Speaker 2:I did not. I walked past it all the time. I did go to the Country Music Hall of Fame, though. Man that blew my socks off. I thought that was super cool to see. I mean, you could spend days in there and not fully see every little thing that they have. That was awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of people come down here, stay at the Grand Ole Opry, don't even come to Broadway. I kind of tend to stay downtown and never go out that way or go out to the suburbs, but there's something for everyone down here. Definitely, if you like music, this is the place to be the uh, I was very interested and, of course, if you're out there listening and you're in the trading community, we'd love for you to come visit us over here at nesvik trading. But there's quite a group of uh unique traders from all over, but this group was started primarily from Memphis. Did they explain to you the the history of Nesvik?
Speaker 2:no, they didn't really.
Speaker 1:Tom Nesvik, I believe. His father was up in Chicago at the Board of Trade and Tom was up there and then he had started with a company and then eventually had his own IB and from that a group. It grew, but very much Memphis-based and now Nashville and just expanding. They're meeting people. The industry is changing a lot and so they're meeting a lot of people all over the country and they provide a good opportunity, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:What are you going to do after college?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I have one more semester left at Oklahoma State. Or college, I don't know, I have one more semester left at Oklahoma State. I made sure that I wanted to make myself as valuable as possible. I thought, kind of going into college I might get like an ag degree, maybe ag business, but I swapped halfway through and I'm getting a finance degree now. So not all of my previous ag credits directly applied credits, uh, directly applied to that degree degree. So I have to spend an extra semester here, uh, finishing up.
Speaker 2:Um, at first I was kind of bummed out about it, but now the longer I realize it. Uh, having another semester to be a college kid, uh, and kind of figure out what I want to do with life, uh, it's definitely going to be fun and it's just to enjoy another season. The football games should, should be a blast. Uh, I don't know. I really enjoy the commodity trading side. I'm gonna try and get my series three here shortly, um, but the cattle feeding and agriculture and production, that's where my heart is. I want to, whatever I do, uh, to be tied back to that at the end of the day, and trading does that for me for sure.
Speaker 1:And, uh, the having cattle in Colorado. That's just an ideal place, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um yeah, mild winters, mild summers, really dry ground, great grazing opportunities with the packing plant right there as well. Cattle feeding is definitely an option. I really really do love that area.
Speaker 1:And the opportunities. They're not making a bunch more cowboys, I mean, it's going to be harder to stay in this game. Wouldn't you agree with how much everything costs now?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, it seems like there's less and less of us every day, but I think that's just a challenge we have to accept and step up the plate and kind of pull ourselves up by our bootstraps a little bit. It's the world we're given and we have to make the most of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and some of the tools you've learned. You learned a little bit more this summer about LRP insurance right.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:What did you learn about that?
Speaker 2:I think it's certainly valuable for the cattle side. I think it's something that a lot of people aren't even aware of anymore. It's been out for a long time now. It's been out for a long time now, but I think we still have to spread a little bit more awareness for our cattle, cow, calf guys and cattle feeder guys out there what a valuable tool it is in terms of hedging and risk mitigation.
Speaker 1:Of course, we're doing the futures and options side over here, but we have associations with LRP agents. Yeah, it's interesting because these cattle touched all-time record highs this week again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's cool to see it go up like this, but we don't know for how long.
Speaker 1:Yeah, grain markets had a little bounce this week too. Maybe commodities are coming back, I noticed. Quoting up all those quotes on the cow guy, you'll see that commodities had a good day. Can you, even though you're younger? Can you sense that agriculture is under pressure, with interest rates higher and commodities lower?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I heard the other day that in 2025, there were more foreclosures on agricultural operations than there had in the past three years before that combined. It's not an easy business to get into right now, so interest rates certainly don't make that any easier. Water usage is a big problem that we have in Colorado right now for sure. We're fighting with cities over water rights and, flat out where we're at, we can't grow corn unless we irrigate, so it's a big problem for us we're at, we can't grow corn unless we irrigate, so it's a big problem for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were showing me the google map and google earth. There was, uh, you could see the irrigators and stuff, the circles yeah, yeah, whiskeys for drinking and waters for fighting yeah, well, it's, it's big business. Um, what's the uh? When you leave colorado, what's the closest big city? You said Denver, just south of you an hour.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Denver's south of us about an hour. Uh, to the west is Fort Collins, about 30 to 45 minutes. And then we're about 45 minutes from Cheyenne to the north as well.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like a just a beautiful area. Okay, so when you get out of college, what do you think your choices are? What can you do?
Speaker 2:Okay. So when you get out of college, what do you think your choices are? What can you do? I definitely want to trade. I think having my Series 3 in my back pocket will be valuable, I think. Long-term I would like to be out in Colorado, but in the short-term I think I'd like to maybe go out and explore the world and cut my teeth a little bit and learn some things I wouldn't have otherwise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and hats off to you moving down here. You didn't know, uh, anyone. That first day you walked in you had to introduce yourself to all of us and then we immediately went out, went to a concert and away you are.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, you're yeah I walked into the restaurant, I didn't even know what brian looked like, so I had to ask the hostess if she knew who brian leith was. And yeah, I walked over and shook his hand and yeah, went from there oh lord, that was a fun night.
Speaker 1:A lot of fun nights here in nashville. A lot of fun nights and markets, talking cattle. Uh, let's dive in a little bit more before we finish. Good, and I think people in agriculture are listening to this show, this livestock judging, what uh, you know what goes into it when you go to your next gig. How did you become a livestock judge? What do you have to do at the gig?
Speaker 2:um, I think the key thing is just always being professional and making it about the kids.
Speaker 2:Uh, there are open shows and livestock shows like that that we judge, but most of the time, uh, it's 4-h and ffa kids from 8 to 18 showing their livestock to us that they've worked on for the whole past year and really trying to show us their hard work.
Speaker 2:I think that's the thing that gets forgotten. At times. It's a competition, but at the end of the day, it's about raising good kids and being the judges to give those kids a fair opinion and do the best to your abilities. Kind of tying it back to cattle right now, I think the important thing to maybe discuss on the mic while you're judging these shows, or to try and make some real-world connections to these kids about, maybe predictions you have in terms of the cattle market, in terms of how cattle finish and the way you handle them Maybe this one's not far along, needs to have a little bit more cover so that maybe they can push higher into the upper choice or low primes and maybe kind of teach some of those lessons when you have the general public there right in front of you.
Speaker 1:And silly question. Now you know I don't know what I'm talking about, but how much money do people spend on getting these animals, you know, raised and ready for judging?
Speaker 2:You know, it's kind of like any other sport. You can participate at your local level and just kind of do the the small little local shows like you would in sports, just be on the local rec team, or you can be on the travel team and go to big national shows and obviously when you do that you can get up there into some kind of expensive livestock. Uh, that's yeah not out to be unheard of of selling uh breeding heifers from uh 50 000 or more, um just to be shown for a little while. But obviously there's some breeding opportunities that come there as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's big business, big money. I know people are into it, are really into it, like the. You know they call some of the horse people the crazy horse people. Do they call the cattle people the crazy cattle?
Speaker 2:people. Oh yeah, great Everything has its fair share of crazies, but I feel, like the livestock world, we definitely get a couple more of them every now and then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a niche market. All right, everyone. Well, I just wanted to introduce you to this summer Jed Sidwell. He's a summer intern here at NASVIC. He's got an interesting background in livestock judging, real passionate about cattle, got involved in markets and I'm just looking real forward to seeing what, uh, his career looks like. Moves like do you have social medias where people can get a hold of you, jed?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, just jed sidwell on facebook. Uh, my last name is spelled s-i-d-w-e-l-l, uh. And then I'm on uh snapchat and instagram as well. Uh, same thing there. Uh, yeah, if you're looking for youth livestock, we raise sheep and cattle. Sidwell shows sheep and Sidwell shows steers. Yeah, it's been a blast, tommy. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:Thanks, chad, we'll do this again, hopefully come back here after graduation and start working with us again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 1:See you, my friend.
Speaker 2:See you down.
