READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

Feeding the World

Feeding the world while nurturing the planet doesn’t necessarily mean going back to
nature, Andy Coghlan reports

The world’s population continues to climb and, despite the rise of high-tech agriculture,
800 million people don’t get enough to eat. Admittedly, this is often due to lack of money
since the world actually produces enough for everyone. However, by 2050, we will have
9 billion mouths to feed, 3 billion more than today. ‘Agriculture must become the solution
to environmental problems in 50 years. If we don’t have systems that make the
#2 strategic buildings
environment better—not just hold the fort—then we’re in trouble,’ says Kenneth
Cassman, an agronomist at the University of Nebraska in America. That view was
share characteristics with
echoed by the Curry Report, a government panel that surveyed the future of farming in #10
Britain.

Concerned consumers are facing what appears to be an ever-widening ideological

divide. In one corner are the techno-optimists, who put their faith in genetically modified #11
crops and improved agro-chemicals; in the other are advocates of organic farming, who
reject artificial chemicals and embrace back-to-nature techniques. Both sides cite #12
plausible science to back their claims, leaving many people to believe we’re faced with
unsuited
harsh and unpleasant choice
a stark choice between two mutually incompatible options.

#5 Not so. If you set ideology aside, and simply ask how the world can produce the food it
needs with the least environmental cost, a new middle way opens. Like today’s organic
farming, the intelligent farming of the future should pay much more attention to the
intelligent, clever
health of its soil and the ecosystem it is part of, as well as making shrewd and locally
appropriate use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The most crucial ingredient in this
#6 new style of agriculture is not chemicals but information about what is happening in
each field and how to respond.

Organic farming sounds attractive since an approach that rejects synthetic chemicals
surely runs no risk of poisoning land and water, and its emphasis on natural ecosystems
seems to be good for everyone. Perhaps these easy assumptions explain why sales of
organic food across Europeinnocent
are increasing by at least 50% a year. Going organic
extremely happy
sounds idyllic, but it is also naïve and has its own suite of environmental costs, which
can be worse than those of conventional farming, especially if it were to become the
world norm. Fundamentally, the organic versus chemical debate focuses on the wrong
question. The issue is not what you put into a farm, but what you get out of it, both in
terms of crop yields and pollutants.
 unhealthy, poisonous
It is a fundamental belief of organic farming that chemical fertilizers are unwholesome,
and plant nutrients must come from natural sources. But in effect, the main
environmental damage done by chemical fertilizers, as opposed to any other kinds, is
through the carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels used in their synthesis, and nitrogen
oxides released by their degradation. Excess nitrogen from chemical fertilizers can
dung go'ng #13
pollute groundwater, but so can excess nitrogen from organic manures.
supporter
Advocates of organic farming like to point out that fields organically managed can
produce yields just as high as fields enhanced with synthetic fertilizers. For example, Bill
Liebhardt, at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania, recently compiled the results of such
#4 comparisons for corn, wheat, soybeans, and tomatoes in the US and found that the
organic fields averaged between 94 and 100 percent of the yields of nearby
conventional crops.

But this optimistic picture tells only half the story. Organic farmers can’t reach this yield
every year if they want to build soil nutrients without synthetic fertilizers. They need to
#8occur in turn repeatedly
alternate with soil-building crops, and this is the biggest cost of organic farming. Vaclav
Smil, of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, estimates that if farmers worldwide
gave up the 80 million tonnes of synthetic fertilizer they now use each year, total grain
#1 production would fall by at least half. Either farms would have to double the amount of
land they cultivate—at catastrophic cost to natural habitats—or billions of people would
starve.

In short, the world needs chemical fertilizers, even though farmers in much of the
#9 in difficulties
temperate zone produce so much grain that they are hard-pressed to sell it at a profit.
But if they were to cut back drastically on their fertilizer use, and harvests were to
shrink, grain prices would go up, making poor people hungrier. Besides the obvious
moral cost of this approach, nothing destroys ecosystems more surely than hungry
people who cannot afford to think about tomorrow because they are desperate to feed
their children today.

Technologically advanced farmers can now monitor their yields and target their fertilizer
to the parts of the field where it will do the most good, which, in turn, increases the yield.
Eventually, farmers may incorporate long-term weather forecasts into their planning so
#3 they can cut back on fertilizer use when the weather is likely to make harvests poor
anyway, says Ron Olson, an agronomist from Florida.

The challenge in moving towards a new, more intelligent farming of the future is as
much political as it is technological. We already know how to build better soils, how to
keep pests in check, and how to recognize when synthetic chemicals can provide the
confident decisions
decisive edge to maximize yields. What’s missing is political will. The time has come to
step past the tired battle lines drawn up between organics advocates and agribusiness
and enter the zone in between, where the real solutions lie.
Questions 1-4

Match each opinion with the correct person, A, B, C, or D.

Write the correct letter, A, B, C, or D in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

1 Without the use of synthetic fertilizers, large numbers of people would die of hunger. C
2 We need agricultural methods that work for the environment. A D
3 In the future, the quantity of fertilizer used will be linked to predicted harvests.
B
4 The output from organic soils is very nearly equal to that from fields treated with
chemical fertilizers.

List of people:

A Kenneth Cassman
B Bill Liebhardt
C Vaclav Smil
D Ron Olson

Questions 5-9

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 5-9 on your answer sheet, write:

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NO GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

5 There are only two real farming options worth considering. No

6 Farmers need to act on locally relevant information. Yes
7 Chemical fertilizers are expensive to produce. Not given
8 Successful organic farming requires crop rotation. Yes
9 Farmers are unable to meet demand for grain in temperate zones. No
 Questions 10-13

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.

A leading American agronomist is concerned that unless we improve our approach to

food production, the world will face serious shortages by the year 2050. A government
team which looked ahead at British 10 farming
……………. came up with a similar prediction.
The pro-technology lobby believes in using crops which are 11genetically
…………….as modified
well as
organic farmers believe
relying heavily on agro-chemicals. On the other hand, 12 …………….
passionately in natural techniques. The real problem is, however, that both natural and
13chemical
……………. fertilizers damage the ecosystem. The move towards a more sensible
approach to farming is being hampered by a lack of political will. We need to steer a
middle course if we are to solve the world’s food problems.

look ahead- to think about what will happen in the

future