AG Squawk AM 8/3/2026 with Jed Sidwell | The Update You Need to Start Your Week

We walk through a fast, numbers-first market check across cattle, hogs, and grains, then zoom out to the outside forces that can move ag prices before the day even starts. We also dig into two quieter but important structural signals: record canola crush demand and a shrinking pool of select beef that changes how the choice select spread works.
• live cattle, feeder cattle, and lean hogs weekly tone and key price levels
• corn, soybeans, and wheat quotes alongside platform context
• crude oil’s overnight drop and why outside markets matter to ag
• Corn Belt flood risk versus Southern Plains heat and drought stress
• record Canadian canola crush and China’s zero tariff on canola meal
• select share falling in negotiated box beef loads as a structural shift
• packed economic calendar including PMI, ISM, export inspections, crush, and crop progress
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Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Focus

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Good morning and welcome to Ag Squawk AM. Jed Sidwell here, live from Joliet, Illinois. Today on this fine Monday, we're going to talk about select beef. And there's a grain in the grain crush. We don't talk about all that much. We'll get to all of that here in a bit.

Livestock And Grain Market Snapshot

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Kind of a mixed bag in the livestock space last week. Live cattle were mostly unchanged across the board. October was down 20 cents at 227 and a quarter. Feeder cattle were up $1.33 at $3.43.78. Lean Hogs up a buck and a half at $84.85. As I quote the markets here live with our quotes from plus $500. T4 plus $500 trading software is what we use here at Ag Bull. Trading corn September contract is at $437. Soybeans are at $11.62. Wheat was mostly unchanged overnight at $6.38. The big thing that changed overnight, and I don't have a slide for today, but I dang sure wanted to bring it up. Oil, man, it gapped lower last night on the open. Looking at the September

Oil Drops Hard Overnight

SPEAKER_00 1:30

contract, it is at $78.98 right now. Fell from $85 all the way down to below 80. Big, big jump there overnight based on you know politics and policy and attacks over there in the Strait of Horror Moose. We won't get into that today. I've been talking about it quite a bit here recently. On to our weather discussion. Active uh wet corn belt pattern continues to be a flood risk. That's that purple spot over there over Iowa and Chicago and things like that. It has just been a rainy,

Flood Risk And Heat Stress Weather

SPEAKER_00 2:01

dreary weekend. Saturday, I spent some time in west central Illinois, and it was like Forrest Gump describing all the different kinds of rain. They got them all down there. So yeah, look out for some of that flood risk there. The Southern Plains, though, I know I wear my Oklahoma State shirt quite a bit on this show. That's because I'm an alumni of there and talking to some of my cow calf buddies down in Oklahoma. Man, it's been awful dry and awful hot for the past couple of weeks with no relief in sight. So say your prayers for them down there. Europe has a very similar story to Oklahoma. It is hot and dry over there as well, having a big effect on their crops. Well, the grain discussion that I alluded to is canola. We don't talk about that a whole lot, but Canada crushed a record 1.169 million tons of canola in

Canola Crush Steals The Grain Story

SPEAKER_00 2:51

June. The daily rate up nearly 10% over the old record. Now, the grain crush came out on Friday, and we were all talking about soybeans, but man, canola kind of stole the story. This is driven by Cargill and Lewis Dreyfus's capacity and China's zero tariff on canola meal through the end of the year. That is a big jump to that red dot up there in the top right corner. The livestock discussion. Recently, I had a fellow ag teacher friend of mine that was getting some kids ready to go to a livestock contest, and they he called me and he said, Hey, do I need to tell my

Why Select Beef Keeps Shrinking

SPEAKER_00 3:26

kids to have some knowledge about the choice select spread? I'm like, Well, we don't kill just a lot of select cattle here. And that's what this chart really signals, and that's why I wanted to pop it up on here. Select share of the negotiated box beef loads has fallen to 15.5% this July. It's down 25% from two years ago. This is a genual structural shrinkage of the select pool rather than just a weird reporting quirk or a wrong number. That is a big fall down there, and it's because we're pushing cattle to heavier weight, we kill more prime cattle than ever. At the same time, if we do that, we have less and less selects. On the economic calendar today, and that's why I didn't have another outside market slide because I wanted to take some time to digest this. There is a lot going on today. The SP Global Manufacturing PMI

Big Data Day On The Calendar

SPEAKER_00 4:20

comes out at 8 45 a.m. The ISM manufacturing comes out at 9, export inspections at 10. The fats and oils and grain crushings come out at 2. And then the crop progress comes out at 3 p.m. Those are all central time for you guys playing along at home. Well, that's all I have for you today. Make sure and go and follow us on all of our socials. We're at Ag Bull Media on all of them. We release content every single day. And make sure to pop on over to our

Where To Follow And Subscribe

SPEAKER_00 4:50

website and check out the premium subscription. We got a bit bunch of you guys hop on board over the weekend, and we're so happy to have you as a member of the Ag Bull team. We're only sponsored by people we like, and they don't pressure us to say anything. So we are free to report the news as we see it and what is actually going on in the markets, in the ag world. We have a plethora of different perspectives that we bring on, especially in the afternoon with Mr. Davis Michelson's show. So go ahead and check on over on that. Media is changing, and we really pride ourselves on trying to be on the front end of that change. Well, I'm Jed Sidwell with Ag Bull Media. It was great having you on this morning. Remember, we're a financial channel that loves agriculture. Have a great day.