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For much of the 20th century, milk was a simple part of daily life in the U.S., as farmers raised cows, milkmen delivered bottle

admin2022-11-16  151
问题     For much of the 20th century, milk was a simple part of daily life in the U.S., as farmers raised cows, milkmen delivered bottles and children drank it at school. But those days are fading—a fact emphasized by the announcement on Jan. 5 by Borden Dairy, the milk processor, that it is filing for bankruptcy protection. Borden, which said it was impacted by "market challenges facing the dairy industry," follows Dean Foods, America’s largest milk producer, which filed for bankruptcy protection in November.
    America has fallen out of love with drinking milk, as lower-calorie options have proliferated and people are substituting water bottles for milk cartons. Americans each drank an estimated 146 lb. of fluid milk—a category that includes products from skim to cream—in 2018, according to the USDAs Economic Research Service. That may sound like a lot, but it’s down 26％ just since 2000. The downturn has been tough on dairy processors like Borden and Dean, which buy fresh milk from farms and use techniques like pasteurization to create a consumer-safe beverage with a longer shelf life. For the past five years, thanks to technology that increased milk production, fresh-milk prices were relatively low, which meant processors could break even despite shifting demand.
    But prices began ticking up again last year, squeezing the processors’ already tight margins. "Declining sales in a thin-margin business is not a good recipe for success," says Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin.
    Milk processors are also facing competition from big retailers, which have set up their own processing plants. In 2018, Walmart opened a milk-processing plant in Indiana to serve hundreds of stores in the Midwest, taking away approximately 95 million gal. of milk-processing business from Dean Foods.
    On the other end of the supply chain, dairy farms are facing trouble of their own. The low prices that were a boon to processors left small farmers struggling across the industry. The number of Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies in 2019 was up 24％ from the previous year. "We’re trying our best to hang on," says Mary Rieckmann, a dairy farmer in Wisconsin whose family has turned to GoFundMe to keep their century-old farm running.
    Borden says it plans to continue to operate as it restructures under court supervision. But if that plan fails, it wouldn’t be the first dairy processor to cease operations. There were 605 fluid-milk plants in America in 1990. By 2018, there were only 459.
From the last two paragraphs we can infer that________.
选项 A、Dairy farms are encountering difficulties as milk prices are too low
B、Chapter 12 forces many farms to file for bankruptcy protection
C、Borden plans to go on operating as long as the court allows it to do so
D、Borden will be the last processor to stop operation in the coming years
答案A
解析 根据题干信息定位到最后两段。第五段第一、二句的语意为“供应链的另一端________奶牛场，也正面临着自己的问题。低价牛奶对于加工商来说是个福利，可却使得该行业中的小户奶农举步维艰(On the other end of…small farmers struggling across the industry)。”由此可知，不光乳制品生产公司面临困境，奶农情况一样不乐观。选项A“由于牛奶价格过低，奶牛场正遭遇困境”与原文表意一致，为正确答案。B项“美国破产法第12章迫使许多农场申请破产保护”不正确，文中倒数第二段提到按照美国破产法第12章申请农场破产保护的农户数量在上升，但并不是第12章迫使许多农场去申请破产保护；选项C“博登乳业计划继续运营下去，只要法院允许其这样做”，原文最后一段提到博登乳业计划在法院的监督下进行重组，然后继续运营，并不是只要法院允许它运营，它就继续运营下去。D项“博登乳业将是未来几年里最后一个停止运营的牛奶加工商”，与原文表述相反，最后一段第二句提到：如果该计划失败，博登公司也将会像其他已经破产的公司一样停止运营，故排除。
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