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  3. Organic Agriculture The idea that shopping is the new politics is certainly enticing. Never mind the ballot box: vote with y

Organic Agriculture The idea that shopping is the new politics is certainly enticing. Never mind the ballot box: vote with y

admin2013-01-10  78
问题                             Organic Agriculture
    The idea that shopping is the new politics is certainly enticing. Never mind the ballot box: vote with your supermarket trolley instead. Elections occur relatively rarely, but you probably go shopping several times a month, providing yourself with lots of opportunities to express your opinions. If you are worried about the environment, you might buy organic food; if you want to help poor farmers, you can do your bit by buying Fair-trade products; or you can express a dislike of evil multinational companies and rampant globalization by buying only local produce. And the best bit is that shopping, unlike voting, is fun; so you can "do good and enjoy yourself at the same time".
    Sadly, it’s not that easy.There are good reasons to doubt the claims made about three of the most popular varieties of "ethical" food; organic food, Fair-trade food and local food. People who want to make the world a better place cannot do so by shifting their shopping habits: transforming the planet requires duller disciplines, like politics.
    Organic food, which is grown without man-made pesticides and fertilizers, is generally assumed to be more environmentally friendly than conventional intensive farming, which is heavily reliant on chemical inputs. But it all depends what you mean by "environmentally friendly". Farming is inherently bad for the environment. Since humans took it up around 11,000 years ago, the result has been deforestation on a massive scale. But following the "green revolution" of the 1960s greater use of chemical fertilizer has tripled grain yields with very little increase in the area of land under cultivation. Organic methods, which rely on crop rotation, manure and compost in place of fertilizer, are far less intensive. So producing the world’s current agricultural output organically would require several times as much land as is currently cultivated. There wouldn’t be much room left for the rainforest.
    Surely the case for local food, produced as close as possible to the consumer in order to minimize "food miles" and, by extension, carbon emissions, is clear? Surprisingly, it is not. A study of Britain’s food system found that nearly half of food-vehicle miles (ie. miles traveled by vehicles carrying food) were driven by cars going to and from the shops. Most people live closer to a supermarket than a farmer’s market, so more local food could mean more food-vehicle miles. Moving food around in big, carefully packed lorries, as supermarkets do, may in fact be the most efficient way to transport the stuff.
According to the passage, what would happen if the world’s current agriculture goes organic?
选项 A、Chemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers will disappear.
B、Grain yields will increase by three times than before.
C、More land will be taken from rainforest for growing crops.
D、Rainforest will be out of existence in the near future.
答案C
解析 事实细节题。根据题干关键词agriculture goes organic定位到原文第三段最后两句：So producing the world’s current agricultural output organically would require several times as much land as is currently cultivated．There wouldn’t be much room left for the rainforest．如果要产出目前数量粮食的话，需要几倍于现有的耕地才行。这样就会侵害雨林的生存空间，因此选[C]项。[A]项“诸如杀虫剂、化肥这样的化学品会消失”，[B]项“粮食产量将较以前增长三倍”和[D]项“热带雨林在不久的将来不复存在”均不正确。
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