By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Longtime KFEQ agricultural market reporter Greg Clement reflects on his years with the St. Joseph Stockyards in wake of the announcement that the stockyards has been sold.
Clement went to auctioneering school in 1984, about the time he volunteered to sell feeder pigs at the St. Joseph Stockyards without pay.
“So, I sold feeder pigs for three years at the St. Joe Stockyards and never drew a dime, but I learned to be an auctioneer,” Clement tells host Bob Wollenman on KFEQ’s AgriShop.
Clement remembers the height of the stockyards throughout the Midwest, ironically owned by a major firm in New York City.
“You had St. Paul. You had Sioux Falls. You had Sioux City. You had Omaha. You had St. Joe and then on to Kansas City, then to Oklahoma City and then on to Ft. Worth,” Clement says. “At one time, they were all owned by same big outfit. Then they all split up.”
The St. Joseph Stockyards has been sold by Mark Servaes, who has owned the Stockyards since 2012. Previously, the Canal Capitol Corporation ran the Stockyards since 1963. The last livestock sale will be held on May 19th.
In May of 1989, owner Ed Czerwien asked Clement to begin reporting on KFEQ.
“He wanted someone with United Commission firm, who he was president of in addition to being manager of the stockyards. He wanted somebody with United to do the livestock markets on the radio,” Clement says, adding he also had early morning TV show.
Clement remembers going along with his brothers to the stockyards with his father.
“He’d start taking us boys to the stockyards with him before we even started to school. And, on the third floor of the Exchange Building, there was a big office up there and it had a big oak desk and that’s where they did the market broadcast from,” Clements say. “I can remember seeing the microphone there and on the side of the microphone it had KFEQ.”
Clement has been inducted into the Ag Hall of Fame.