I. Read the text“Agricultural Economics”. For each gap, choose the best word a, b, c, or d. Make up a plan of the text. Agricultural economics

Agricultural economics originally applied the principles of economics to the production of ____________(1) and livestock — a discipline known as agronomics. Agronomics was a branch of economics that specifically dealt with land usage. It focused on maximizing the crop yield while maintaining a good soil ecosystem. Throughout the 20th century the discipline expanded and the current scope of the discipline is much broader. Agricultural economics today includes a variety of applied areas, having considerable overlap with conventional economics.

Agronomics, or the application of economic methods to optimizing the decisions made by agricultural producers, arose around the turn of the 20th century. Henry Charles Taylor was the greatest ____________ (2) with the establishment of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Wisconsin in 1909.

Another contributor, Theodore Schultz was among the first to examine development economics as a problem related directly to agriculture. Schultz was also instrumental in establishing econometrics as a tool for use in analyzing agricultural economics empirically; he noted in his landmark 1956 article that agricultural supply analysis is rooted in "shifting sand," implying that it was and is simply not being done correctly.

Since the 1970s, agricultural economics has primarily focused on seven main topics, according to a scholar in the field: agricultural environment and ___________(3) resources; risk and uncertainty; __________ (4) and food supply chains; prices and incomes; market structures; trade and development; and technical change and human _________ (5).

Today, the field of agricultural economics has transformed into a more ____________ (6) discipline which covers farm management and production economics, rural ____________ (7) and institutions, agricultural ___________ (8) and prices, agricultural policy and development, food and _________(9) economics, and environmental and natural resource economics.

In terms of technical change, there have been increasingly rapid developments and __________________ (10) in the equipment designed for agricultural research. This equipment includes instruments for plant physiology research, and monitoring soil conditions and atmospheres.

1	Acrops	Bpoultry	C dairy products	D animal husbandry
2	Aa	Bfounder	C participant	D contributor
3	A soil	B resources	C farming	D agricultural policy
4	Aconsumption	B demand	Cplanting	D producing
5	A being	Bresources	C labour	D capital
6	Aintegrative	Bcomplex	Cprofound	Dcomplicated
7	Aenvironment	Bpopulation	Cfinance	Darea
8	Amarketing	Bmanagement	Cproduction	Deconomics
9	Aprocessing	Bnutrition	Cnourishment	Dconsumption
10	Aadvantages	Bachievements	Cinnovations	Dimprovements

II. You are going to read the text about modern technology for sustainable agricultural systems.