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

admin2013-01-10  40

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, some people buy Fair-trade products to______.

选项 A、show their support to the Fair-trade policy
B、help poor farmers working in Fair-trade
C、donate to Fair-trade to help the poor farmers
D、show kindness and generosity to the poor

答案A

解析 事实细节题。根据题干关键词buy Fair—trade products定位到原文第一段第四句:...if you want to help poor farmers,you can do your bit by buying Fair-trade products...如果要帮助贫苦农民,也可以买些公平贸易产品,这其实是通过购物行为来表示支持公平贸易政策,因此选[A]项。[B]项“帮助公平贸易行业的贫穷农民”;[C]项“捐钱以帮助贫穷民”和[D]项“向穷困的人展示仁慈大方”均错。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/iDhK777K
0

最新回复(0)