tailieunhanh - IELTS Academic Reading Sample 144 - The True Cost of Food

Nhằm giúp các bạn có thêm tài liệu tham khảo và ôn thi tiếng Anh, mời các bạn cùng tham khảo nội dung tài liệu IELTS Academic Reading Sample 144 - The True Cost of Food dưới đây. Hy vọng nội dung tài liệu phục vụ hữu ích nhu cầu học tập và ôn thi. | You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are base on Reading Passage 144 below The True Cost of Food A For more than forty years the cost of food has been rising. It has now reached a point where a growing number of people believe that it is far too high and that bringing it down will be one of the great challenges of the twenty first century. That cost however is not in immediate cash. In the West at least most food is now far cheaper to buy in relative terms than it was in 1960. The cost is in the collateral damage of the very methods of food production that have made the food cheaper in the pollution of water the enervation of soil the destruction of wildlife the harm to animal welfare and the threat to human health caused by modern industrial agriculture. B First mechanisation then mass use of chemical fertilisers and pestic ides then monocultures then battery rearing of live stock and now genetic engineering the onward march of intensive farming has seemed unstoppable in the last half-century as the yields of produce have soared. But the damage it has caused has been colossal. In Britain for example many of our best-loved farmland birds such as the skylark the grey partridge the lapwing and the corn bunting have van ished from huge stretches of countryside as have even more wild flowers and insects. This is a direct result of the way we have produced our food in the last four decades. Thousands of miles of hedgerows thousands of ponds have disappeared from the landscape. The faecal filth of salmon farming has driven wild salmon from many of the sea lochs and rivers of Scotland. Natural soil fertility is dropping in many areas because of continuous industrial fertiliser and pesticide use while the growth of algae is increasing in lakes because of the fertiliser run-off. C 5 Put it all together and it looks like a battlefield but consumers rarely make the connection at the dinner table. That is mainly because the costs of all this damage are .