
More Bad News
全球糧食危機
by Matthew Brown
Another global concern comes into view: a food shortage.
糧食短缺引起全球關注。
As if global financial and environmental crisis were not enough, another alarming problem has been developing in the past few years: the food crisis.
_(1)_ In poorer countries, it''s an urgent problem, and some parts of the world have already been experiencing food riots. Food prices are an economic issue, and in economics there is usually a lot of disagreement about the causes of problems. Some of the main factors, though, may be as follows.
Weather might be the most significant issue when it comes to current food shortages. _(2)_ To make matters worse, these droughts and other bad weather may be linked with global warming. Another problem is ever-rising oil and energy costs. _(3)_ Emerging economies, countries that were poor but are becoming rich, are using more and more fuel and competing for available resources. As economies around the world change, there is more demand for expensive food such as beef. However, a 100-calorie piece of beef requires 700 calories'' worth of grain to be produced. _(4)_ Efforts to make biofuel may also be to blame. Some people argue that it takes far more energy to grow grain to produce biofuel than we can get from the biofuel itself. _(5)_
The food shortage has people pretty worried, but it is only recently that the problem has come to popular attention. For now, most of us will just have to wait and see what kind of solutions might be possible.
(A) If the argument is correct, then perhaps the grain would be better used for food instead.
(B) Over the last few years, the prices of food staples such as wheat, corn, and rice have doubled or tripled.
(C) So this means that beef production uses a lot more grain to produce a lot less food.
(D) Modern farming techniques require a huge amount of energy, and energy is becoming very expensive.
(E) The combination of recent natural disasters, such as the tsunami in Asia and droughts in Australia, Africa, and Central America, has led to very poor crop yields.