Corn on the cusp

摘要

DARK clouds gathered on the horizon foretell doom in the popular imagination. Yet it is the prolonged absence of them in America's Midwest that threatens global grain and soyabean markets. A lack of rain has brought the worst drought in over 50 years to a region that usually provides over half the corn (maize) and more than two-fifths of the soya to world mar-kets.