Because agriculture is so important to a nation’s well-being, governments have always been concerned with it. For example, the U

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问题     Because agriculture is so important to a nation’s well-being, governments have always been concerned with it. For example, the United States and Canada have long produced surpluses that complicate their economies. Surpluses tend to lower prices to farmers and seriously endanger the agriculture industry. Governments have instituted systems of price supports to maintain a fair price when surpluses cause prices to drop. The system in the United States is a good example. A government program supports the prices paid to farmers for grains, and other agricultural products.
    Support prices are based on parity, which is the ratio between the prices farmers receive for their crops and the prices they must pay for things they need. The government selected the period from 1910 to 1914 as a time when farm prices were in a fair ratio with farming costs. This is the base period now used to determine parity prices.
    The idea is to assure farmers that what they get for a bushel of wheat will buy the same amount of, say, seed as it did in the years of the base period; if prices drop too far below this ideal the government can help in a number of ways. For example, it may buy much of a surplus at parity prices. Governments have instituted a wide variety of other controls for prices and, also, for farm output, mainly at the request of the farmers themselves. Farm prices tend to fluctuate more than other prices do, and the incomes of farmers fluctuate along with farm prices.
    Various measures for maintaining farm prices and incomes include tariff or import levies, import quotas, export subsidies, direct payment to farmers, and limitations on production. All of these measures are useful and are used to some extent by most developed countries. An important example of such a program is the soil-bank plan, which aimed at limiting production while improving farmland.
    The European Economic Community(EEC)established a common agricultural policy(CAP)for its member nations, called the Common Market countries. The aim is to create free trade for individual commodities within the community. When production of a commodity exceeds EEC consumption, the EEC may buy the excess for storage, pay to have it reprocessed, or export it to countries outside the Common Market. In this way the EEC can maintain its members’ farm prices at levels equal to or even higher than those in such market-competitive nations as the United States and Canada.
It can be inferred that the common agricultural policy aims to______.

选项 A、avoid competition among its member nations
B、limit production and improve farmland
C、ensure a balance between production and consumption
D、encourage free competition among its member nations

答案A

解析 这是一道推论题。题干中的信号词为the common agricultural policy,出自第五段第一句话中。文章第五段指出:欧共体为其成员国制定了共同农业政策,其目的是在共同体内部实现农产品的自由贸易。由此可知,共同农业政策的目的就是避免共同体内的竞争。A说“避免成员国之间的竞争”,这与文章的意思符合。与B有关的信息是第四段的最后一句话,文中说“这些计划的一个典型例子就是保持地力计划,其目的是限制生产,改善农田”,这是在说稳定农产品价格和农民收入的措施,与共同农业政策没有关系,所以B不对。与C有关的信息是第五段的第三句话,文中是说“如果某种产品的生产超过了共同体的消费需要,共同体就可能将剩余产品买下储存起来,付酬并将这些剩余产品再加工,或者将其出口到共同体以外的国家”,这是明确指出的,不必推论就可知结果,所以C不对。D与文章的意思相反。
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