Latest / AG Bull / AG Squawk AM 7/16/2026 | Beans Were Swinging and Beef Was Flexing

Transcript

AG Squawk AM 7/16/2026 | Beans Were Swinging and Beef Was Flexing · AG Bull

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning and welcome to AgSquawk AM.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Jed Sidwell here with Ag Bull Media.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're a financial channel that loves agriculture.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to talk about the soybean roller coaster and the price of ground beef.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get to all of that here in a bit.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's look at the livestock market and where they closed yesterday.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Live cattle were down across the board.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: August was at 230 and 13 cents, down a dollar thirty.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Feeder cattle, August was actually up.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: The rest were down, however, at 350 there, up a dollar and fifteen cents.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Lean hogs hit triple digits yesterday, finally at$100.33, up a dollar and eighty-eight.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Always great to see that as we quote the grain markets live here with our quotes from T4 from plus 500.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: The September contracts looking at corn is at 448.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Beans are at 11.94, and Chicago wheat is at 680.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll get to more disc grain discussion here in a bit.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: But right now, let's go ahead and look at our weather brought to us by brought to us from Mr.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Craig Solberger, in-house meteorologist here at Nezvik Trading.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is a 72-hour chart here.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of the story for this week is going to be the dryness that we're going to see into the western corn belt, hard red wheat belt over the next week.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be really, really warm overnight.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: We reach 70 degrees overnight, and it's not going to get lower than that all the way into the middle of next week.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's really going to provide a stress on the crops out there.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: A similar story is coming out of the Mid-South.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not every day that we say, yeah, there's a similar story between the Great Plains and the Mid-South and Mississippi and Arkansas, but there is, they're going to see really some drought into the next 15 days down there in continent areas like that.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to really, really put a more damper on them because they are used to seeing more rain this time of year than the Great Plains is.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So our thoughts and prayers go out to them over here for the next couple weeks.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the next thing I wanted to bring up were U.S.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: soybeans.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: The soybean roller coaster, as I alluded to it earlier, if you're watching the markets yesterday, within one trading session, it went all traded in a range of 20 cents, both up and down, which is really, really huge.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought it would be good to take a step back and talk about everyone's favorite legume for a little bit.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Soybean demand has slightly gone up in just because we have a tighter U.S.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: supply, some flooding in areas, China has started to buy just a bit more.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, South America can still produce them cheaper than we can and provide a cheaper product.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So China's ultimately probably going to look to them for a bit more soybeans.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it'll be interesting to watch the soybean complex here in the coming months.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, we kind of continue to see this rally that we have been, and hopefully that holds out.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, onto our livestock discussion for today.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I thought this chart was really interesting to pop up because the Tuesday ERS meat price update is really worth looking at because it shows a story that compares beef to the rest of the protein complex.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the price of beef costs four times as much right now as a price as a pound of chicken.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, the pound of ground beef costs four times as much as a pound of chicken, and demand keeps holding out for beef, which is really, really interesting.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: The top line there is beef versus chicken, and the bottom line is beef versus pork.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at some point we are going to reach the demand of what the consumer is willing to pay for a price of ground beef.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at this point, it's still the premium product, but how much are you willing to pay for something that has a similar substitute at the counter?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And something that I thought would also be interesting to bring up on our chart of the day.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't done a chart of the day in a while, but I had a question that got asked to me yesterday.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Jed, why don't we talk about the choice select spread anymore?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: As much as we used to, you know, it still comes out and we like to look at it, but it's not this big thing that we need to just pay attention to and track just as closely as maybe we did 10, 15 years ago.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because we don't have as many select cattle as we once did.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And why is that?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because they keep on going high choice and prime.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at this chart here, Mr.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Mike Sands sent this in our livestock group chat.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought it was really interesting to look at that blue line.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's 2026 comprehensive fed cattle grading choice or better.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: That is a huge jump year over year.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: But then if you look in and zoom in on June and July, where we're at there, normally we see a decrease in our primes and choices.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: But this time of year, for some reason, we're seeing a spike.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we have even fewer select grades of cattle.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: That'll be interesting to watch and see what that does regarding our imports if we can keep producing enough lean grinds that we don't have to import more from outside the U.S.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's all I have for you today in terms of slides.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the economic calendar for today.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Export sales come out at 7:30 a.m., retail sales at the same time, and jobless claims also at 7.30.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Pending home sales come out at 9 a.m.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: and natural gas storage change comes out at 9.30.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, folks, thanks for tuning in and watching today.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a blast as always to have you on.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to tune in to Mr.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Davis Michelson this afternoon.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: He did a great episode yesterday with Zach Hefty with Ag PhD.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Their field day is coming up, and that is a really, really cool event.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I encourage you to go back to yesterday's video on all platforms YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for watching and thanks for listening today.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions or have anything you'd like to see on the show, make sure and drop a comment on any platform where you're watching.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Our email and phone numbers will be below.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can find us at www.agbull.com, or we'd love to have you on our premium side with that.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for watching.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jed Sidwell with Ag Bull Media.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're a financial channel that loves agriculture.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great day.