Table of Contents
Passage
A The world’s population continues to climb. And despite the rise of high-tech agriculture, 800 million people don’t get enough to eat. Clearly it’s time to rethink the food we eat and where it comes from. Feeding 9 billion people will take more than the same old farming practices, especially if we want to do it without felling rainforests and planting every last scrap of prairie. Finding food for all those people will tax farmers’-and researchers’—ingenuity to the limit. Yet already, precious aquifers that provide irrigation water for some of the world’s most productive farmlands are drying up or filling with seawater, and arable land in China is eroding to create vast dust storms that redden sunsets as far away as North America. “Agriculture must become the solution to environmental problems in 50 years. If we don’t have systems that make the environment better-not just hold the fort-then we’re in trouble,” says Kenneth Cassman, an agronomist at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. That view was echoed in January by the Curry report, a government panel that surveyed the future of farming and food in Britain.
B ‘It’s easy to say agriculture has to do better, but what should this friendly farming of the future look like? Concerned consumers come up short at this point, facing what appears to be an ever-widening ideological divide. In one corner are the techno-optimists who put their faith in genetically modified crops, improved agrochemicals and computer-enhanced machinery; in the other are advocates of organic farming, who reject artificial chemicals and embrace back-to-nature techniques such as composting. Both sides cite plausible science to back their claims to the moral high ground, and both bring enough passion to the debate for many people to come away thinking we’re faced with a stark choice between two mutually incompatible options.
C Not so. If you take off the ideological blinkers and simply ask how the world can product the food it needs with the least environmental cost, a new middle way opens. The key is sustainability: whatever we do must not destroy the capital of soil and water we need to keep on producing. Like today’s organic farming, the intelligent farming should pay much more attention to the health of its soil and the ecosystem it’s part of. But intelligent farming should also make shrewd and locally appropriate use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. The most crucial ingredient in this new style of agriculture is not chemicals but information about what’s happening in each field and how to respond. Yet ironically, this key element may be the most neglected today.
D Clearly, organic farming has all the warm, fuzzy sentiment its side. An approach that eschews synthetic chemicals surely runs no risk of poisoning land and water. And its emphasis on building up natural ecosystems seems to be good for everyone. Perhaps these easy assumptions explain why sales of organic food across Europe are increasing by at least 50 percent per year.
E Going organic sounds idyllic-but it’s naive, too. Organic agriculture 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. But more fundamentally, the organic versus-chemical debate focuses on the wrong question. The issue isn’t what you put into a farm, but what you get out of it, both in terms of crop yields and pollutants, and what condition the farm is in when you’re done.
F Take chemical fertilisers, which deliver nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient to crops along with some phosphorus and potassium. It is a mantra of organic farming that these fertilisers are unwholesome, and plant nutrients must come from natural sources. But in fact the main environmental damage done by chemical fertilisers as opposed to any other kind is through greenhouse gases-carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels used in their synthesis and nitrogen oxides released by their degradation. Excess nitrogen from chemical fertilisers can pollute groundwater, but so can excess nitrogen from organic manures.
G On the other hand, relying solely on chemical fertilisers to provide soil utrients without doing other things to build healthy soil is damaging. Organic farmers don’t use chemical fertilisers, so they are very good at building soil fertility by working crop residues and manure into the soil, rotating grain with legumes that fix atmospheric nitrogen, and other techniques.
H This generates vital soil nutrients and also creates a soil that is richer in organic matter, so it retains nutrients better and is hospitable to the crop’s roots and creatures such as earthworms that help maintain soil fertility. Such soil also holds water better and therefore makes more efficient use of both rainfall and irrigation water. And organic matter ties up CO2 in the soil, helping to offset emissions from burning fossil fuels and reduce global warming.
I Advocates of organic farming like to point out that fields managed in this way can produce yields just as high as fields juiced up with synthetic fertilisers. For example, Bill Liebhardt, research manager at the Podale Institute in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, recently compiled the results of such 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.
J But this optimistic picture tells only half the story. Farmers can’t grow such crops every year if they want to maintain or build soil nutrients without synthetic fertilisers. They need to alternate with soil-building crops such as pasture grasses and legumes such as alfalfa. So in the long term, the yield of staple grains such as wheat, rice and corn must go down. This is the biggest cost of organic farming. Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, estimates that if farmers worldwide gave up the 80 million tonnes of synthetic fertiliser they now use each year, total grain production would fall by at least half. Either farmers would have to double the amount of land they cultivate at catastrophic cost to natural habitats, or billions of people would starve.
K That doesn’t mean farmers couldn’t get by with less fertiliser. Technologically advanced farmers in wealthy countries, for instance, can now monitor their yields hectare by hectare, or even more finely, throughout a huge field. They can then target their fertiliser to the parts of the field where it will do the most good, instead of responding to average conditions. This increases yield and decreases fertiliser use. Eventually, farmers may incorporate long-term weather forecasts into their planning as well, so that they can cut back on fertiliser use when the weather is likely to make harvests poor anyway, says Ron Olson, an agronomist with Cargill Fertilizer in Tampa, Florida.
L Organic techniques certainly have their benefits, especially for poor farmers. But strict “organic agriculture”, which prohibits certain technologies and allows others, isn’t always better for the environment. Take herbicides, for example. These can leach into waterways and poison both wildlife and people. Just last month, researchers led by Tyrone Hayes at the University of California at Berkeley found that even low concentrations of atrazine, the most commonly used weedkiller in the US, can prevent frog tadpoles from developing properly.
Questions
Questions 1-4 Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
A Vaclav Smil
B Bill Liebhdrdt
C Kenneth Cassman
D Ron Olson
1 Use of chemical fertilizer can be optimised by combining weather information.
2 Organic farming yield is nearly equal to the traditional one.
3 Better agricultural setting is a significant key to solve environmental tough nut.
4 Substantial production loss would happen in case all farmers shifted from using synthetic fertiliser.
Questions 5-9 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 5-9 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the sataement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
5 Increasing population, draining irrigation, eroding farmland push agricultural industry to extremity.
6 There are only two options for farmers: they use chemical fertiliser or natural approach.
7 Chemical fertiliser currently are more expensive than the natural fertilisers.
8 In order to keep nutrient in the soil, organic farmers need to rotate planting method.
9 “organic agriculture” is the way that environment-damaging technologies are all strictly forbidden.
Questions 10-13 Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using no more than two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
Summary
Several 10 ………………….. approaches need to be applied in order that global population wouldn’t go starved. A team called 11 ………………….. repeated the viewpoint of a scholar by a survey in British farming. More and more European farmers believe in 12 ………………….. farming these years. The argument of organic against 13 ………………….. seems in an inaccurate direction.
Answers
Below are the answers, key words, synonyms and full explanations for the IELTS Reading passage Organic Farming and Fertilisers (Passage 1, Questions 1–13).
Questions 1–4: Matching People (A–D)
A Vaclav Smil · B Bill Liebhardt · C Kenneth Cassman · D Ron Olson
1. Use of chemical fertiliser can be optimised by combining weather information.
Answer: D (Ron Olson)
Key words: incorporate long-term weather forecasts … cut back on fertiliser use when the weather is likely to make harvests poor
Synonyms: optimise with weather = “farmers may incorporate long-term weather forecasts into their planning … so that they can cut back on fertiliser use, says Ron Olson”
Explanation: Paragraph K: Olson links weather forecasts to smarter fertiliser use.
2. Organic farming yield is nearly equal to the traditional one.
Answer: B (Bill Liebhardt)
Key words: organic fields averaged between 94 and 100 per cent of the yields of nearby conventional crops
Synonyms: nearly equal = “Bill Liebhardt … found that the organic fields averaged between 94 and 100 per cent of the yields of nearby conventional crops”
Explanation: Paragraph I: Liebhardt shows organic yields nearly match conventional ones.
3. A better agricultural setting is a significant key to solving environmental problems.
Answer: C (Kenneth Cassman)
Key words: Agriculture must become the solution to environmental problems
Synonyms: key to solve environmental problems = “Agriculture must become the solution to environmental problems in 50 years … says Kenneth Cassman”
Explanation: Paragraph A: Cassman argues agriculture must solve environmental problems.
4. Substantial production loss would happen if all farmers stopped using synthetic fertiliser.
Answer: A (Vaclav Smil)
Key words: if farmers … gave up the 80 million tonnes of synthetic fertiliser … total grain production would fall by at least half
Synonyms: substantial loss = “Vaclav Smil … estimates that if farmers worldwide gave up … synthetic fertiliser … total grain production would fall by at least half”
Explanation: Paragraph J: Smil warns grain output would halve without synthetic fertiliser.
Questions 5–9: True / False / Not Given
5. Rising population, draining irrigation and eroding farmland push the agricultural industry to its limits.
Answer: TRUE
Key words: population continues to climb; aquifers … drying up; arable land … eroding; tax farmers’ ingenuity to the limit
Synonyms: pushed to extremity = “precious aquifers … are drying up … arable land … is eroding … Finding food … will tax farmers’ … ingenuity to the limit”
Explanation: Paragraph A describes these pressures stretching agriculture to the limit → TRUE.
6. There are only two options for farmers: chemical fertiliser or the natural approach.
Answer: FALSE
Key words: a new middle way opens
Synonyms: not only two = “Not so … a new middle way opens … intelligent farming should also make shrewd … use of chemical fertilisers”
Explanation: Paragraph C rejects the two-option view and proposes a middle way → FALSE.
7. Chemical fertilisers are currently more expensive than natural fertilisers.
Answer: NOT GIVEN
Key words: no price comparison
Synonyms: The passage compares environmental effects, never the price of chemical versus natural fertilisers.
Explanation: No cost comparison is made → NOT GIVEN.
8. To keep nutrients in the soil, organic farmers need to rotate their planting method.
Answer: TRUE
Key words: rotating grain with legumes; alternate with soil-building crops
Synonyms: rotate planting = “building soil fertility by … rotating grain with legumes … They need to alternate with soil-building crops”
Explanation: Paragraphs G/J: organic farmers rotate crops to maintain soil nutrients → TRUE.
9. “Organic agriculture” is a system in which all environment-damaging technologies are strictly forbidden.
Answer: FALSE
Key words: prohibits certain technologies and allows others
Synonyms: not all forbidden = “strict ‘organic agriculture’, which prohibits certain technologies and allows others”
Explanation: Paragraph L: organic farming bans only some technologies, not all → FALSE.
Questions 10–13: Summary Completion (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS)
10. Several ……… approaches need to be applied so that the global population would not starve.
Answer: farming
Key words: more than the same old farming practices
Synonyms: = “Feeding 9 billion people will take more than the same old farming practices”
Explanation: Paragraph A: new farming approaches are needed to feed everyone.
11. A team called the ……… report echoed a scholar’s viewpoint through a survey of British farming.
Answer: Curry
Key words: the Curry report, a government panel that surveyed the future of farming … in Britain
Synonyms: = “That view was echoed … by the Curry report, a government panel that surveyed the future of farming and food in Britain”
Explanation: Paragraph A: the Curry report echoed Cassman’s view.
12. More and more European farmers/consumers believe in ……… farming these years.
Answer: organic (also accepted: natural)
Key words: sales of organic food across Europe are increasing by at least 50 per cent per year; back-to-nature techniques
Synonyms: = “sales of organic food across Europe are increasing by at least 50 per cent per year”
Explanation: Paragraph D: Europeans increasingly embrace organic (back-to-nature/natural) farming. (mini-ielts lists this answer as “natural”; both fit the passage.)
13. The argument of organic against ……… seems to head in the wrong direction.
Answer: chemical
Key words: the organic-versus-chemical debate focuses on the wrong question
Synonyms: = “the organic-versus-chemical debate focuses on the wrong question”
Explanation: Paragraph E: the organic-vs-chemical argument is misdirected.
Answer Key (Quick Reference)
| Q | Answer | Q | Answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | D (Ron Olson) | 8 | TRUE |
| 2 | B (Bill Liebhardt) | 9 | FALSE |
| 3 | C (Kenneth Cassman) | 10 | farming |
| 4 | A (Vaclav Smil) | 11 | Curry |
| 5 | TRUE | 12 | organic (natural) |
| 6 | FALSE | 13 | chemical |
| 7 | NOT GIVEN |
