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  3. Across the Midwest, values are up 23％ from a year ago. Rents on Iowa farmland have surged 10.22％ so far this year. And more oppo

Across the Midwest, values are up 23％ from a year ago. Rents on Iowa farmland have surged 10.22％ so far this year. And more oppo

admin2022-12-09  156
问题     Across the Midwest, values are up 23％ from a year ago. Rents on Iowa farmland have surged 10.22％ so far this year. And more opportunity is on the way. More than 40％ of farmland is owned by people older than 65, so hundreds of millions of their acres will transfer to new owners in the coming years.
    That’s good news for real estate brokers, but a challenge to would-be farmers, who consistently cite the high cost of land as their greatest barrier to entry. That’s not just a rural problem. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, supermarket shelves went empty due in part due to farm-industry consolidation. Smaller, innovative and more productive farmers are a means of counteracting the trends that led to those shortages. But to do it, they need land.
    New and beginning farmers (a formal category defined by the US Department of Agriculture as operating a farm for 10 years or less) naturally trend younger than established ones. And like younger, entrepreneurial people in any profession they tend to be more open to new ideas and products.
    For example, new and beginning farmers are less likely to grow grains and oilseeds—the most common US crops—than older farmers. Interest in climate-friendly farming appears high among younger farmers and organizations representing them.
    New and beginning farmers tend to operate on a smaller scale, using one-third less acreage to generate a similar proportion of revenue.
    But smaller, in modern agriculture, isn’t always better. Over the last three decades, agricultural production has become heavily consolidated, providing big producers with cost efficiencies and marketing advantages. Those advantages manifest themselves in several ways, including increasingly centralized food procurement channels not available to small farmers. That works out well for consumers—until a crisis hits and knocks out a major producer or two. The pandemic was one such shock.
    The Agriculture Department released a report examining the US food chain. The first listed priority is addressing concentration and consolidation in food production, manufacturing and distribution. A key means for doing so is boosting local and regional food networks, such as farmers’ markets that provided a safety net to consumers and producers during the pandemic.
    Around 23％ of beginning farmers sell through regional and local markets. Working in parallel with other less established farmers, they are the vanguard for a food sector that’s adapting to climate change and changing consumer tastes. However, they rent more and own less land than their veteran counterparts. Today’s surging land prices make the challenge more difficult.
    To encourage them, the federal government is proposing to begin scoring banks on how well they extend credit to new and beginning farmers. Its rule would encourage lending. Meanwhile, Congress should consider measures that will encourage retiring farmers to sell their land to new ones.
    None of these measures could produce an immediate uptick in land ownership by younger and beginning farmers facing record land prices. But over time, they could help grow the next generation of resilient and productive farmers.
Big producers differ from small farmers in that they________.
选项 A、have control on most of the marketing channels
B、are less susceptible to the COVID-19 pandemic
C、are more cost-efficient by embracing new ideas
D、have pricing power over the produce in the market
答案A
解析 细节题。根据题干中的big producers可定位至第六段。第三句提到，including increasingly centralized food procurement channels not available to small farmers(包括越来越集中的粮食采购渠道，而小农户则无法获得这些渠道)，A项是对原文的同义转述，故正确。B项属于是非混淆，文中提到了新冠肺炎疫情对大型生产商的影响，故排除该项。C项属于主观臆断，第二句提到，农业生产的高度整合为大型生产商提供了成本效率，而非因为接受新的想法而更具有成本效率，故排除该项。选项D属于无中生有，文中并未提到大型生产商对市场上的产品有定价权，故排除。故本题答案为A项。
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