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.
【R3】
选项
答案G
解析 在这一段中，作者提出了将主要问题定义为大规模饥荒的思路是有问题的，因此认为必须通过提供粮食来解决问题的想法也是有问题的。因为粮食短缺不是因为世界上没有足够的粮食，而是源自世界粮食产地的不均衡分布和穷人难以支付的粮食价格。还有人提出饥荒不可避免的原因不在于自然灾害，而是由于管理水平低下。因此这一段主要是对以往关于粮食短缺这一问题错误认识的批判，因为“根本就不存在粮食短缺”，由此推知[G]“粮食短缺的错误概念”为正确答案。
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