2. 考研
  3. [A]The Development of Food Aid Agencies [B]The Upcoming Revisions to Present Policies [C]The Dilemma and Hope of Present Situati

[A]The Development of Food Aid Agencies [B]The Upcoming Revisions to Present Policies [C]The Dilemma and Hope of Present Situati

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问题 [A]The Development of Food Aid Agencies
[B]The Upcoming Revisions to Present Policies
[C]The Dilemma and Hope of Present Situation
[D]The Problem of Malnutrition
[E]The Consequences Caused by Increased Food Price
[F]The Shortcomings of the Present Food Aid System
[G]The Wrong Idea of Food Shortage
    For years, anti-poverty campaigners railed against low commodity prices, which depressed farmers’ incomes in developing countries. In recent months, the world price of virtually all staples has shot up, but the activists are still not cheering.
【R1】______
    High food prices do help poor farmers, but they also hurt the more numerous category of people who must buy food to survive, which has caused serious problems for the organisations that bring food aid to the poorest. The World Food Programme(WFP)has just issued an urgent appeal for $500m to cover higher food costs. America’s Agency for International Development(USAID)is asking for $350m.
【R2】______
    The short-term outlook seems grim, both for the poor and the agencies that supposedly help them. The WFP says hunger is on the rise in the countries it watches. It classifies as "hotspots" the places—most of central Africa, plus Afghanistan—where more than a third of the people do not get as much food as is needed. A second tier, where between a fifth and a third lack adequate food, includes much of West Africa, the Indian sub-continent and Bolivia. Dim as all this sounds, there are some grounds for hope. Today’s woes may lead to fundamental changes for the better in the world’s approach to hunger and food shortages.
【R3】______
    One mistake is the very idea of defining the main problem as massive hunger, and hence the solution as providing food by any means necessary. "There is simply no shortage of food," insists Rachel Nugent of America’s Centre for Global Development. Of course, there are places where political(and in some cases ecological)factors cause an intense local shortage of food. In those cases, food aid is the only option. But leaving aside those extraordinary events, most pundits agree that the world now has plenty of food. The real challenge is not the volume of food available; it is the problem of food being in the wrong place and at a price the poorest cannot afford. Michael Hess of USAID adds that famines are made inevitable by poor governance, not natural disasters.
【R4】______
    Moreover, hunger is transient and hard to measure, but malnutrition is a fatal killer. South Asia, which has plentiful food, suffers from twice the level of malnutrition as crisis-prone sub-Saharan Africa. The snag is that tackling malnutrition is harder than sending bags of grain. It means fixing health systems, improving the delivery of nutrients in the food chain, educating people about hygiene and other unpopular and unprofitable jobs.
【R5】______
    Change may be coming. Over the objections of some tough lobbies, George Bush has proposed fixing some of the distorting aspects of America’s food policies. The president has called for more emphasis on procuring produce from local farmers in poor countries. And in a bold gesture, CARE has said it will no longer accept any American government donations using the mon-etization approach. Most encouraging are some proposed changes at the WFP. Ms Sheeran hopes to persuade her board at a meeting in June to shift her agency’s focus away from emergency food aid and towards a wider field. She wants to expand its role in surveillance, stockpiling and risk-insurance. She also speaks of targeting subsidies or vouchers "in ways that complement markets rather than distort them", as current subsidies often do. If this sort of clarity prevails, it would be a silver lining on the dark cloud that now looms over the poor.
【R2】
选项
答案C
解析 在论述了粮价上涨引发的种种问题之后，作者在这一段开头提到对于穷人以及旨在帮助他们的救援机构而言，短期前景都很暗淡，并且指出饥荒在某些国家处于上升态势，同时列举了出现粮食危机的部分国家和地区。不过在这之后作者也指出尽管如此，希望仍然是存在的，因为目前的困境可能会导致根本性的变化，从而更好地解决世界上的饥荒和粮食短缺的问题。显然该题的正确答案为[C]“当前的困境与希望”。
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