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Corn prices have spiked 50 percent over the past two months—the same months that have established this season as our worst period of drought in more than fifty years. Lack of water combined with extreme heat for stretches of 100 or more days is spelling doom for crops like corn and soybeans, and prices are following suit.

On his show Sunday, Chris spoke with an Ohio produce farmer whose fields of failed crops point to a problem that goes far beyond her family’s losses: the reverberations of parched fields in the Midwest may be felt around the world.

—Zoë Schlanger