06/21/07 Bidding On A Winner

Bidding for a winner. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Yesterday we talked about the Livestock Marketing Associations 44th annual World Livestock Auctioneer contest. This year's winner is Trent Stewart from Redmond, Oregon. STEWART: It feels great, how could you not feel great. I feel very lucky. It's a great event and it's a great exposition for the industry so always love to compete in it and have a lot of respect for all my competitors and it was nice to win, don't get me wrong, it just seems like the competition gets stiffer and stiffer every year then there's a new face every year. It feels good to yeah, get it under your belt so to speak. Stewart has been an auctioneer for 14 years and competed in the contest for 8. He says it takes a lot of dedication to something you love to get to the championship. STEWART: Oh, just a lot of dedication. It's just like anything else, if you love it whether it's hunting or being in the construction business or whatever it might be, if you love it you won't give up on it. The contest is sponsored by LMA and according to John McBride it's an important way to get a good price for your livestock. MCBRIDE: The rhythm that they get into  an auctioneer develops their own chant, their own rhythm  keeps the sale moving and momentum is a very important part of an auction. You have to build it, you have to keep it and I think the chant developed as a way to be saying something almost all the time. You'll notice at like a livestock auction as the livestock are being led into the ring and before he starts he will always have some kind of patter going so that you are listening to him and getting into the rhythm. So if you are a budding auctioneer or a veteran of the livestock ring, McBride says they'd love to have you in the competition. MCBRIDE: We are going to have four regional contests next year and they will have to qualify at one of those regional contests. They can enter all four of them if they want to. We will be announcing that on our web site and that is triple w-dot lmaweb.com. McBride says that according to the rules, once you win the World title you can't compete any longer. So what does a former World Champion Auctioneer do after that? Trent Stewart says: STEWART: Oh they'll let me  next year I get to host it and it's in Durant, Oklahoma at Billy Perrin's market and so I get to go back there and help create another world champ. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.