Экология сегодня. Макеева М.Н - 15 стр.

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LESSON 3
Grammar:
1. Числительное (The Numeral). Составные числительные. Хронологические даты.
2. Дробные числительные. Десятичные дроби. Математические знаки.
Text:
FOOD’S FRONTIER: THE NEXT GREEN REVOLUTION
Over the past half century, the United States has sent billions of tons of food to famine-stricken countries
and that is one reason many remain in a dire struggle to feed themselves.
Dumping our surplus grain depressed the prices of locally grown grain, pushing farmers in those countries
out of business explains environmental writer Richard Manning, author of "Food’s Frontier: the Next Green
Revolution", a new book on efforts to establish sustainable agriculture in developing countries around the
globe.
The situation is critical. Industrial agriculture, mostly developed in the 1960s "Green Revolution", has
reached its production limit. In some areas, the combination of monocropping and heavy fertilizer and pesticide
use has actually reduced the land’s capacity to produce. Meanwhile, the population of developing countries is
expected to double by 2020.
The second green revolution is a revolution not only in biological science, but also in information distribu-
tion among scientists, farmers, and consumers. "Food’s Frontier" documents the Minneapolis-based McKnight
Foundation’s Collaborative Crop Research Program, which has funded research and training in agricultural sci-
ence in nine developing countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Each project is headed by scientists from
the developing country, who identify the agricultural problem they want to tackle and put together interdiscipli-
nary teams of scientists such as biologists, economists, and anthropologists. Each team collaborates with coun-
terparts in U.S. universities.
"We’re realizing that economic and cultural factors are as important as biology, soil and climate in devel-
oping a secure global food supply", – Manning said. – "Certainly, you have to understand the biology behind
the interaction of, say, a chickpea and a pod borer if you want to reduce the damage the pest does to the plant.
But you also need to figure out how to help Ugandan farmers learn about a method of planting that protects
sweet potato from weevils, or how to convince Mexican wholesalers that there’s a potentially strong market in
the United States for blue corn".
McKnight-funded research in areas like polyculture – the planting of several crops amongst each other –
and the discovery of natural protections against pests in disease in wild relatives of common crops, also stand to
benefit U.S. farmers.
"The Midwest is strewn with rural ghost towns whose small farmers were driven away by huge agricultural
firms farming thousands of acres of a single crop. And the oversupply of grain has promoted widespread usage
of high-fructose corn syrup in processed foods, contributing to the epidemic of obesity", – Manning said. The
McKnight project researching an ancient Aztec polycropping system, still used by Mexican peasants, called
"milpa", could provide a solution for reversing monoculture in the U.S.
Experiments underway in New York, Chile and Brazil crossing domestic potatoes, plagued by a range of
insect pests, with wild relatives of potatoes, whose sticky leaves trap insects, are revolutionizing the economics
of potato farming both in the U.S. and worldwide.
"The intensive use of pesticides and herbicides has contaminated our water and depleted our soils. It costs
between $60 and $200 per acre per year to spray potatoes with insecticide. A grower in upstate New York typi-
cally gets about $6 for a hundred pounds of these potatoes, while organic market pays $30 a hundredweight for
pesticide-free potatoes", – Manning said.
Three projects described in "Food’s Frontier" involve genetic engineering: in Nanjing, China, creating
scab-resistant wheat; in India, increasing the efficiency of production and nutritional value of chickpea; and in
Shanghai, China, eradicating viral rice disease by eliminating the ability of a plant hopper insect to transmit the
virus.
Recognizing that modern biotechnology has the potential to contribute much to the solutions of agricultural
problems in the developing world, Manning dismisses the argument that genetic engineering is unnatural.
"From lop-eared rabbits to wine grapes, artificial form of life as a result of human-engineered selection sur-

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