NGIRESI, Tanzania — Farmer Loi Bangoti picks corn by hand on the
lush, cool slopes of his land, nestled under the cloudy shadow
of Africa’s Half a world away, farmer Tim Recker drives his
combine through the famously flat, open cornfields that stretch
out in the sun across the plains of Iowa. For all their
differences, both men rely on a complex global food market that
decides how much their corn is worth and who will buy it. And
the lives of both — along with millions of other farmers — will
be affected by a growing movement to change one of the biggest
forces shaping the market: subsidies. Many experts agree farmers
need help to grow food year in and year out, but Western farmers
may get too much and African farmers too little. Western farmers
receive billions of dollars in subsidies every year, which makes
their food cheap to grow and sell. African farmers are left on
their own because of decades of anti-subsidy policies pushed by
the World Bank and others as a condition for aid money. Now,
Africans are fi