22 JUNE, 2024

ENSURING OUR FUTURE FOOD SUPPLY

Climate change and new diseases threaten the limited varieties of seeds we depend on for food.
Luckily, we still have many of the seeds used in the past-but we must take steps to save them. Questions 1-7

Six miles outside the town of Decorah, Iowa in the USA, an 890-acre stretch of rolling fields and TRUE
woods called Heritage Farm is letting its crops go to seed. Everything about Heritage Farm is in FALSE
stark contrast to the surrounding acres of intensively farmed fields of corn and soybean that are NOT GIVEN
typical of modern agriculture. Heritage Farm is devoted to collecting rather than growing seeds. It
1. Heritage Farm is different from most other nearby
is home to the Seed Savers Exchange, one of the largest non government-owned seed banks in the
farms.
United States.
2. Most nongovernment-owned seed banks are bigger
In 1975 Diane Ott Whealy was given the seedlings of two plant varieties that her great grandfather than Seed Savers Exchange.
had brought to America from Bavaria in 1870: Grandpa Ott’s morning glory and his German Pink
tomato. Wanting to preserve similar traditional varieties, known as heirloom plants, Diane and her 3. Diane Ott Whealy's grandfather taught her a lot
husband, Kent, decided to establish a place where the seeds of the past could be kept and traded. about seed varieties.
The exchange now has more than 13,000 members, and the many thousands of heirloom varieties
they have donated are kept in its walk-in coolers, freezers, and root cellars the seeds of many 4. The seeds people give to the Seed Savers Exchange
thousands of heirloom varieties and, as you walk around an old red barn that is covered in Grandpa are stored outdoors.
Ott’s beautiful morning glory blossoms, you come across the different vegetables, herbs, and
flowers they have planted there. 5. Diane and her husband choose which heirloom
seeds to grow on Heritage Farm.
"Each year our members list their seeds in this,"Diane Ott Whealy says, handing over a copy of the
6. The seeds are listed in alphabetical order in The
Seed Savers Exchange 2010 Yearbook. It is as thick as a big-city telephone directory, with page after
Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook.
page of exotic beans, garlic, potatoes, peppers, apples, pears, and plums-each with its own name
and personal history .For example, there’s an Estonian Yellow Cherry tomato, which was brought to 7. The Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook describes how
the seed bank by “an elderly Russian lady” who lived in Tallinn, and a Persian Star garlic from “a each seed was obtained.
bazaar in Samarkand.”There’s also a bean donated by archaeologists searching for pygmy elephant
fossils in New Mexico.
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Heirloom vegetables have become fashionable in the United States and Europe over the past
decade, prized by a food movement that emphasizes eating locally and preserving the flavor and
uniqueness of heirloom varieties. Found mostly in farmers' markets and boutique groceries,
heirloom varieties have been squeezed out of supermarkets in favor of modern single-variety fruits Questions 8-13
Complete the notes below.
and vegetables bred to ship well and have a uniform appearance, not to enhance flavor. But the
movement to preserve heirloom varieties goes way beyond the current interest in North America
Choose ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the
and Europe in tasty, locally grown food. It’s also a campaign to protect the world’s future food passage for each answer.
supply. Most people in the well-fed world give little thought to where their food comes from or The food we grow and eat
how it’s grown. They wander through well-stocked supermarkets without realizing that there may
be problem ahead. We’ve been hearing for some time about the loss of flora and fauna in our Supermarkets
rainforests. Very little, by contrast, is being said or done about the parallel decline in the diversity - sell fruit and vegetables that transport well
of the foods we eat. - want fruit and vegetables to be standard in their 8
________.
Food variety extinction is happening all over the world - and it's happening fast. In the United
States an estimated 90 percent of historic fruit and vegetable varieties are no longer grown. Of the Public awareness
7,000 different apple varieties that were grown in the 1800s, fewer than a hundred remain. In the - while people know about plants disappearing from 9
Philippines thousands of varieties of rice once thrived; now only about a hundred are grown there. ________ very few know about the decline in fruit and
vegetable varieties
In China 90 percent of the wheat varieties cultivated just a hundred years ago have disappeared.
Experts estimate that in total we have lost more than 50 percent of the world's food varieties over
Extinction of food varieties
the past century. less than 100 of the types of 10 ________ once
available in the USA are still grown
Why is this a problem? Because if disease or future climate change affects one of the handful of over 11 ________ of food varieties around the world
plants we've come to depend on to feed our growing planet, we might desperately need one of have disappeared in the last 100 years
those varieties we've let become extinct. The loss of the world's cereal diversity is a particular
cause for concern. A fungus called Ug99, which was first identified in Uganda in 1999, is spreading Current problems in food production
across the world's wheat crops. From Uganda it moved to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen. By - a particular fungus is attacking wheat in various
2007 it had jumped the Persian Gulf into Iran. Scientists predict that the fungus will soon make its countries
way into India and Pakistan, then spread to Russia and China, and eventually the USA. - Rick Ward believes the threat to food supplies in Asia
and Africa might lead to a 12 ________.

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Roughly 90 percent of the world's wheat has no defense against this particular fungus. If it reached
the USA, an estimated one billion dollars' worth of crops would be at risk. Scientists believe that in
Asia and Africa alone, the portion currently in danger could leave one billion people without their
primary food source. A famine with significant humanitarian consequences could follow, according Food production in the future
- climate change and disease may put pressure on food
to Rick Ward of Cornell University.
production
- twice the amount of food may be needed because of
The population of the world is expected to reach nine billion by 2045. Some experts say we’ll need an increase in 13 ________.
to double our food production to keep up with this growth. Given the added challenge of climate
change and disease, it is becoming ever more urgent to find ways to increase food yield. The world
has become increasingly dependent upon a technology-driven, one-size-fits-all approach to food
supply. Yet the best hope for securing our food's future may depend on our ability to preserve the
locally cultivated foods of the past.

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 22 JUNE, 2024
WHALE CULTURE
Questions 1-5
A. Most social scientists stubbornly resist the idea that animals have culture. Even such advanced TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN
cetacean mammals as whales and dolphins clearly don’t have art. literature, or architecture. But
patient observation over many years has begun to reveal behaviors that can only have been learnt 1. Resident killer whales appear to remain with their
from other whales. And that, say whale biologists, constitutes culture. maternal group for life
2. Resident killer whales have a more restricted range
B. So far, humpback and killer whales provide the best evidence of culture in cetaceans, and the of calls than transients.
song of the male humpback is among the most striking examples. Humpback populations in 3. There is a vocabulary of sounds which is common to
different oceans sing different songs, but within the same ocean they all stick to the same one. all transient killer whales
However, during the breeding season the sounds change, as it appears that females are drawn to 4. Resident killer whales share the dialects of other
resident communities living in the same waters.
novel songs. One male might add an extra set of groans; another might drop a series of grunts.
5. The dialects of transient killer whales remain
Soon all the other males have altered their own rendition to incorporate the changes until they are constant over time
once again singing the same song. Since this occurs among thousands of whales spread across a
vast part of the planet, the change cannot be in response to any factor in the animals’ environment. Questions 6-8
The latest version of the song can be learnt only from other whales - almost certainly by imitation. Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS
C. Culture plays an even bigger part in the life of killer whales. Nowhere is this more obvious than
along the north-west coast of America, where killer whales are split into two distinct populations - It has been observed that resident killer whales
‘residents’ and ‘transients’. They live in the same stretch of water, but they don’t mingle. In effect, invariably live in fixed family groups, known as 6
they belong to two quite separate cultures. Residents live in stable groups, or ‘pods’, made up of ________. Each of these has its own unique set of calls,
two or three mothers and their offspring - perhaps 20 whales in all. Calves stay with their mothers despite close contact with other family groups. As the
throughout adulthood, and in many years of observation no one has ever seen a whale switch pods. same areas of ocean contain many different groups
Transients travel in smaller, more changeable groups of between three and six. with widely varying dialects, it is clear that these
differences could not have emerged as a result of the
whales' 7 ________ .
D. One of the most obvious distinctions between the transient and resident societies IS the way
they impart information. Killer whales detect prey with a range of echolocating clicks, but converse According to tests conducted by Lance Barrett-Lennard,
with a vocabulary of squeaks, whistles and whines. Transients have only a few such calls, and all a calf communicates exclusively with the dialect of the
group to which its 8 ________belongs. Barrett-Lennard
Jawaaf Consulting Academy (JCA), New Plaza, Putalisadak, 01-4547115, 9866052363 also rejects the idea that the call patterns are inherited.
transient societies share the same ones. Residents have a much more extensive repertoừe, and
each family group has its own unique and distinctive set of calls. Despite regular interaction
between them, each resident pod sticks firmly to its own dialect. Research shows these dialects are
maintained for at least 40 years. Questions 9-11
Choose THREE letters. A-F
E. To qualify as part of killer whale culture, dialects must be learnt from other members of the pod. Which THREE of the following features of whales are
mentioned in the passage'?
Animals with different dialects share the same waters, so the variations can’t be a product of the
physical environment. “ And we can throw out the notion that the dialects are inherited,” says
A intelligence
Lance Barrett-Lennard of the University of the British Columbia. He has spent the past seven years B physical strength
analyzing DNA from 270 whales. His paternity tests reveal that female killer whales invariably C sensitivity to sound.
attract mates from outside their own pod - males with a very different dialects. If dialects were D prolonged life span
programmed by genetics, call patterns from both father and mother would be passed on the cafl. E lengthy period of fertility
“A calf uses the calls of its maternal pod very precisely. There’s no input from the father,’ says F adaptability to a variety of foods
Barrett-Lennard.
Questions 12-14
F. The question still remains - is this culture? It is, according to Frans de Waal of Emory University in Which paragraph contains the following information?
Atlanta, who argues that culture is just another biological adaptation that has evolved in many
creatures. One benefit of viewing culture in this way is that you can start to understand how and 12. an example of the kind of information passed by
why it might have arisen in these creatures. Whales have several biological attributes that give whales to each other
them an advantage in social learning. Apart from their advanced mental abilities, they are adept at
13. a reference to variations in communication styles
recognising sounds: ideal for communication in the marine environment. Many species spend years
between different cultures within one species
rearing their offspring, and live in small, stable, multi-generational societies, a social system that
provides ample opportunity for teaching and learning. 14. ways in which the skills of whales are favorable for
the development of culture
G. But why have cetaceans evolved the ability to learn from other group members? Experts in
whale biology believe that ecological factors and the need to adapt to sudden changes in the
environment played a large part in the emergence of culture. Although the ocean is a relatively

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stable habitat in many ways, it is highly changeable in one crucial respect - the availability of food.
One moment there might be a plentiful supply of fish, the next they’ve disappeared. When that
happens, the past experience of the senior members of the group - and the ability to share this
knowledge - is a huge asset. The dialects of killer whales allow members of the groups to identify
each other, enabling them to share information about food hot spots. Among resident killer
whales, it also allows females to avoid inbreeding by picking out a mate with a strange dialect from
outside their pods, says Barrett-Lennard.

H. The importance of share information seems to have led to biological changes in at least some
species of whale. Female killer whales, like humans, are very unusual in that they live up to a
quarter of a century after they had their last offspring. This only makes sense if they have
something useful to give their descendants. And what whale matriarchs offer is the most important
thing of all - cultural knowledge, vital for the group’s survival, passed directly from one generation
to the next.

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 WRITING TASK – 2
22 JUNE, 2024

Some people say that in the modern world, getting old is

entirely bad. Others, however, say that life for the
elderly nowadays is much better than it was in the past.
Discuss both views and give your opinion.

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