[A]The Development of Food Aid Agencies [B]The Upcoming Revisions to Present Policies [C]The Dilemma and Hope of Present Situati

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问题 [A]The Development of Food Aid Agencies
[B]The Upcoming Revisions to Present Policies
[C]The Dilemma and Hope of Present Situation
[D]The Problem of Malnutrition
[E]The Consequences Caused by Increased Food Price
[F]The Shortcomings of the Present Food Aid System
[G]The Wrong Idea of Food Shortage
    For years, anti-poverty campaigners railed against low commodity prices, which depressed farmers’ incomes in developing countries. In recent months, the world price of virtually all staples has shot up, but the activists are still not cheering.
【R1】______
    High food prices do help poor farmers, but they also hurt the more numerous category of people who must buy food to survive, which has caused serious problems for the organisations that bring food aid to the poorest. The World Food Programme(WFP)has just issued an urgent appeal for $500m to cover higher food costs. America’s Agency for International Development(USAID)is asking for $350m.
【R2】______
    The short-term outlook seems grim, both for the poor and the agencies that supposedly help them. The WFP says hunger is on the rise in the countries it watches. It classifies as "hotspots" the places—most of central Africa, plus Afghanistan—where more than a third of the people do not get as much food as is needed. A second tier, where between a fifth and a third lack adequate food, includes much of West Africa, the Indian sub-continent and Bolivia. Dim as all this sounds, there are some grounds for hope. Today’s woes may lead to fundamental changes for the better in the world’s approach to hunger and food shortages.
【R3】______
    One mistake is the very idea of defining the main problem as massive hunger, and hence the solution as providing food by any means necessary. "There is simply no shortage of food," insists Rachel Nugent of America’s Centre for Global Development. Of course, there are places where political(and in some cases ecological)factors cause an intense local shortage of food. In those cases, food aid is the only option. But leaving aside those extraordinary events, most pundits agree that the world now has plenty of food. The real challenge is not the volume of food available; it is the problem of food being in the wrong place and at a price the poorest cannot afford. Michael Hess of USAID adds that famines are made inevitable by poor governance, not natural disasters.
【R4】______
    Moreover, hunger is transient and hard to measure, but malnutrition is a fatal killer. South Asia, which has plentiful food, suffers from twice the level of malnutrition as crisis-prone sub-Saharan Africa. The snag is that tackling malnutrition is harder than sending bags of grain. It means fixing health systems, improving the delivery of nutrients in the food chain, educating people about hygiene and other unpopular and unprofitable jobs.
【R5】______
    Change may be coming. Over the objections of some tough lobbies, George Bush has proposed fixing some of the distorting aspects of America’s food policies. The president has called for more emphasis on procuring produce from local farmers in poor countries. And in a bold gesture, CARE has said it will no longer accept any American government donations using the mon-etization approach. Most encouraging are some proposed changes at the WFP. Ms Sheeran hopes to persuade her board at a meeting in June to shift her agency’s focus away from emergency food aid and towards a wider field. She wants to expand its role in surveillance, stockpiling and risk-insurance. She also speaks of targeting subsidies or vouchers "in ways that complement markets rather than distort them", as current subsidies often do. If this sort of clarity prevails, it would be a silver lining on the dark cloud that now looms over the poor.
【R1】

选项

答案E

解析 文章开篇提到了粮价上涨的现状以及扶贫人士对此的态度。接下来在第二段中说到高粮价在帮助了贫困农民的同时也损害了那些靠购买粮食维持生存的更为广大的民众,而且给那些援助机构带来了严重的问题,例如联合国世界粮食计划署和美国国际发展署都呼吁增加援助金额以弥补粮价飞涨带来的预算超支。这些都是由于粮价上涨引发的问题,由此可以判断正确答案为[E]“粮食价格上涨引发的后果”。
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