DRIVE DOWN any rural road around Augusta, a small town in western Illinois, on an evening in October, and it seems as if the fields are wrapped in a low mist. In fact, it is dust flung up by combine harvesters. October is harvest season and they are hauling in billions of bushels of maize and soyabeans. Yet all is not well. Sitting in the cab of his combine harvester, Brady Holst, a 32-year-old who farms soya and maize (corn to Americans) on 3,500 acres around Augusta, explains the problem. “It used to be that farmers had to worry about the weather,” he says. “It seems like now it’s more policies or global events. Things like that change quickly and make things tough.”