The US is the world's biggest corn exporter - but for how long?

Across the plains of America known as the Corn Belt, farmers are spending their days and nights nurturing, tending to and praying for the wellbeing of this common yet globally significant food.

Scott Haerr, who harvests 4,000 acres of corn every year (an area nearly five-times the size of New York's Central Park), is one. Inside a massive grain silo on his farm in western Ohio, the third-generation farmer examines corn kernels from last year's harvest. "That's some real good corn," he says, sifting through a handful.

But while the quality of last year's harvest may have been good, the quantity produced by US farmers was anything but.

Rising fertiliser and fuel prices saw the number of acres planted fall by 3.4m compared to 2021. On top of that, a drought in the western plains fuelled an increase in the price of US corn on the international market.