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Файл:English of Global Economics. Учебное пособие
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40
That is despite the industry’s valiant attempts to restructure.
In the past two years the company has sold or shut dozens
of recycling operations, known as material-recovery facilities.
Chicago-based Fort Howard, whose mills make paper from
recycled pulp, merged with another company which makes paper
from scratch. The new company, Fort James, can adjust its mix
of raw materials to the relative prices of recycled and “virgin”
pulp. And recyclers are improving productivity, by automating
sorting centres and redesigning collection routes. Rather than
shipping food-waste to its own depots, Waste Management cuts
costs by taking it direct to a firm that turns it into treats for
dairy cows.
Yet for all its restructuring, the recycling industry can do little
to cure its biggest headache. For some materials, laws requiring
recycling have increased supply regardless of demand. In 1996
alone, 14 million people were added to house-to-house recycling
programmes in America, which now cover more than half the
population. As a result, supply continues to grow even as the price
of recycled materials has fallen.
Paper, the biggest part of most municipal recycling schemes,
is a good illustration. In 1995 the price for old newspapers hit
historic highs; for two weeks, they cost more than $200 a ton.
Recyclers were particularly bullish after the government’s order
in 1993 that federal agencies had to buy printing and writing
paper with at least 30% recycled content by 1998. A boom seemed
certain. De-inking plants, whose construction was subsidised by
the government, went up by the dozen.
Yet with prices so high, pulp mills in Asia, Canada and
Scandinavia also stepped up production of virgin pulp, driving
prices down. Overseas buyers, who tend to prefer virgin pulp,
stopped buying recycled paper, whose exports fell by a third.
Domestic consumption went up, but brimming recycling bins and
cheap virgin pulp meant that suppliers of recycled pulp never made
the money they were expecting. Much of the de-inking capacity
built during the boom is idle. Stung by this experience, paper
companies that need recycled pulp are trying to shift some of
the risk to outside suppliers.
Plastics have been even worse affected. Part of the reason is
that they break the golden rule of recycling, which is that recycled
materials have to be able to compete on price and quality with
new materials. Recycled plastics are cheaper than virgin, but they
Unit One
INDUSTRY
require extra processing which raises their price. With the plastics
industry piling investment into virgin resin production, recycled
plastics are not quite cheap enough, and rates of recycling are
falling. About half of the industry’s recycling capacity is idle. When
prices in some areas hit “near zero”, 24 of 36 national plastics
recyclers left the business. Nevertheless, local governments continued
to collect plastics. In fact, the case for households to recycle their
plastic is weak anyway. There are some 2,500 different kinds of
plastic, and they cannot be mixed. Sorting the stuff is a logistical
nightmare.
Recycling tends to work when supply and demand are allowed
to balance. The biggest and most profitable recycled material is
steel, which has been reused as a matter of course for decades.
The mini-mills that have revitalised the American steel industry
through the use of cheap electric-arc furnaces usually burn scrap
metal. In total, two out of every three pounds of new American
steel (some 68 million tonnes a year) is now produced from scrap.
Much the same is true for aluminium, the second-biggest recycled
material, and copper, which is so valuable that stealing wire out
of abandoned buildings was once a favourite source of income
for crack addicts.
All 50 of America’s states have some kind of recycling law;
11 insist on a specific level of recycling; more are heading in that
direction. But such laws are counterproductive. Unless politicians
find a way to repeal the law of supply and demand, recycling
municipal garbage will remain a risky way to make money
8
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valiant [!vljənt] героический; wistfully с сожалением; share price цена
акции; material-recovery facilities предприятия по утилизации отходов;
a garbage firm фирма по переработке макулатуры; recycling operations
çä. предприятия по переработке отходов; virgin pulp первичная цел
люлоза; to merge сливаться (о фирмах); to be bullish áèðæ. играть на
повышение; de-inking облагораживание макулатуры; to brim наполнять
до кра¸в; bins закрома; to sting (stung) ðàçã. обманывать, одурачивать;
resin [!rezin] смола; electric-arc furnace сталеплавильная электродуговая
печь; scrap металлолом; to repeal a law отменить закон; addict нар
коман.
Ex. 14. Debate on the following topics. Keep the conversation going
in a round table framework.
1. The scientific and technical revolution and its impact on
developing countries.
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2. Specific features of industrialization in Great Britain (the USA,
Japan, Iran, Turkey, South Korea, China, Russia).
3. The modern structural changes in post-industrial countries
(the USA, Great Britain, France, Japan).
4. An age of technological advances.
5. Energy problems.
6. Negative consequences of industrialization.
7. Environmental problems.
Unit One
Unit Two
AGRICULTURE
I. The diverse branches of modern agriculture include agronomy,
horticulture, animal husbandry (livestock and poultry breeding),
dairying, agricultural engineering, soil chemistry, and agricultural
economics.
Early people depended for their survival on hunting, fishing,
and food gathering. To this day, some groups still pursue this
simple way of life, and others have continued as roving herders
(nomads). However, as various groups of people undertook
deliberate cultivation of wild plants and domestication of wild
animals, agriculture came into being. Cultivation of crops — notably
grains such as wheat, rice, corn, rye, barley, and millet — encouraged
settlement of stable farm communities, some of which grew to
be towns and city-states in various parts of the world. Early
agricultural implements — the digging stick, the hoe, the scythe,
and the plough — developed slowly over the centuries, each
innovation (e.g., the introduction of iron) causing profound
changes in human life. From early times, too, people created
ingenious systems of irrigation to control water supply, especially
in arid and semiarid areas of periodic rainfall (the Middle
East, the American Southwest and Mexico, the Nile Valley, and
South Asia)
As the Middle Ages waned, increasing communications, commerce
and the rise of cities in Western Europe tended to turn agriculture
away from subsistence farming towards the growing of crops for
sale outside the community (towards commercial agriculture).
In the 16th and 17th centuries horticulture was greatly developed
and contributed to the so-called agricultural revolution. Exploration
and intercontinental trade, as well as scientific investigation, led
to the development of horticultural knowledge of various crops
and the exchange of farming methods and products such as
potato, beans and corn (maize) introduced from America. Later,
they became almost as common in Northern Europe as rice
in South-East Asia.
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The era of mechanized agriculture began with the invention
of such farm machines as the reaper, the cultivator, the thresher,
and the combine. Other revolutionary innovations continued to
appear over the years, leading to a new type of large-scale
agriculture. Modern science has also revolutionized food processing;
refrigeration has made possible the large meatpacking plants and
shipment and packaging of perishable foods. Urbanization has
fostered the specialties of market gardening and truck farming.
Contemporary and emerging scientific technologies have
unprecedented transformative power. In developed nations the
family farm is disappearing, as industrialized farms, which are
organized according to industrial management techniques, can
more efficiently and economically adapt to new and ever-improving
technology, specialization of crops, and the volatility of farm
prices in a global economy. In many countries extensive government
programs control the planning, financing, and regulation of
agriculture. Agriculture is still the occupation of almost 50% of
the world’s population, but the numbers vary from less than 3%
in industrialized countries to over 60% in Third World countries.
II. By 2020 there will be 2 to 3 billion more people to feed, about
90% living in the poorest parts of the world. This overcrowded
world will be more polluted, ecologically fragile and vulnerable
to disruption. With population growth outpacing the capacity
to produce food, and a concomitant escalation in the use of
agrochemicals, agriculture has reached a crossroads. It will come
under renewed pressure in the years ahead and its future in
guaranteeing food security depends on harnessing the benefit of
contemporary science alongside traditional best practices and
indigenous knowledge, to enhance productivity in a sustainable
way, without compromising ecological security.
By that time, 50% of the population will be living in cities,
not engaged in food production. The shift towards urbanization
and rising consumerism places greater demands on an increasingly
overstretched agricultural resource that is managed and maintained
by a dwindling agrarian class. Attracting and retaining youth
into farming and making it intellectually stimulating is a major
challenge confronting world agriculture. Introducing new methods
into the field, and improving access to information technologies
that improve agricultural efficiency, could raise the profile of
farming and attract young people into agriculture. Farming no
longer represents guaranteed profitability. Future agricultural strategies
Unit Two
AGRICULTURE
must enable poor farmers to escape from poverty which is
widespread globally — 60% Africans live in extreme poverty.
They still employ “slash-and-burn” agriculture — cutting down and
burning trees, exhausting the ash-enriched soil, and then moving
to a new area. In other regions, notably South-East Asia, dense
population and very small holdings necessitate intensive cultivation,
using people and animals but few machines; here the yield is low
in relation to energy expenditure.
There is a well-established methodology for improving yields
under the conditions found in Great Britain for example.
However, it is hard to know how to raise yield and income under
the conditions found on small farms in LDCs. Scientists are
realising the importance of working with farmers to identify their
needs, so that new, culturally-acceptable technologies can be
offered. Introducing transgenic technology into small rural farming
communities has provided farmers with disease-free plantlets,
raising yields and encouraging entrepreneurialism.
A changing climate will exaggerate the existing environmental
disparity between developed and developing countries and may
extend the geographical zones of pests and diseases, decreasing
global yields and heightening the risk of hunger.
Pests are an ever-increasing threat, requiring vast quantities
of pesticides to safeguard yields. Decades of intensive agriculture,
fertilizer and pesticide use have had dire consequences on the
environment, biodiversity and human health. Drought, desertification,
shortage of water and soil infertility, affecting 50% of the world’s
arable land in the future, will limit crop yields and present
new challenges for science. Engineering crops “shaped to the
environment” to combat environmental stresses, or use nutrients
and water more efficiently, will enhance agricultural efficiency
and offer promise for sustainable local food production.
45
III. According to the World Health Organization, malnutrition
affects about 800 million worldwide. It directly affects the physical
and mental development of future generations, threatening the
security of communities. One of today’s greatest nutritional problems
is malnutrition in children who suffer from vitamin deficiency,
a cause of blindness and death.
There is a lack of diversity within current food production
systems, which can lead to vulnerability and compromise food
security. With about 6 crops providing over 90% of global food
needs, agriculture needs to widen this currently very narrow food
46
basket from the major staples, corn, rice, wheat and potatoes to
include beans, pulses and legumes. While funding is plentiful for
rice and wheat, support for cassava, yams and plantains, important
crops for many countries including Africa, is not in the same
league. Sweet potato, one of the first crops to be domesticated
in man’s early agricultural days, holds tremendous potential for
food security and sustainable agriculture in the long-term because
it is well suited to low-input farming and some varieties are
naturally very rich in vitamins, aiding the battle against malnutrition.
It is quite possible that agriculture will face tough decisions
if it is to supply enough food and a balanced diet for 8 billion.
The “green revolution” of the late 1960s averted widespread
famine, largely by introducing high-yielding, “modern semi-dwarf ”
varieties of rice and wheat. Transgenic plants, wisely designed and
used, will add to the sustainability of agriculture: conventional
practices require land to be adjusted to suit the plants whereas
GM technology allows plants to be adjusted to the environment.
Local, sustainable production is crucial for achieving food security
and investment in communication and funding at a local level is
essential, enabling technology to be developed and implemented
where it is most needed.
An increasingly diverse range of plants will be cropping up
in agriculture, as scientists and farmers recognise the power of
these “solar-driven production plants” to produce a spectacular
selection of non-food products. In future cars are likely to run on
fuel made from plants. These biofuels could be based on soybean
and rapeseed oil, or ethanol, which could be brewed and distilled
from sugarbeet or cereals. As oil reserves become depleted,
new opportunities will open for agriculture with the farms of
the future producing lubricants, industrial composites, polymers,
pharmaceuticals and improved animal feed — a truly “multifunctional
agriculture”. Thus agriculture and food production may become
separate cultural and economic entities
1
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Unit Two
Vocabulary List
I
agriculture 1. сельское хозяйство 2. земледелие
commercial agriculture товарное сельское хозяйство
diversified agriculture многоотраслевое сельское хозяйство
AGRICULTURE
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extensive agriculture экстенсивное сельское хозяйство (ма
лопроизводительное, на больших площадях)
intensive agriculture интенсивное сельское хозяйство (высо
копроизводительное, на небольших площадях)
mechanized agriculture механизированное сельское хозяйство
large-scale agriculture 1. крупное земледелие 2. крупномас
штабное сельское хозяйство
slash-and-burn agriculture подсечно-огневое сельское хозяй
ство
sustainable agriculture устойчивое стабильное сельское хо
зяйство (обеспечивающее продовольственную безопасность)
agronomy 1. агрономия 2. земледелие
horticulture 1. садоводство 2. огородничество
husbandry сельское хозяйство, фермерство
animal husbandry животноводство, скотоводство
dairy husbandry молочное хозяйство
breeding разведение, выращивание (животных)
livestock breeding животноводство, скотоводство
poultry breeding птицеводство
dairying производство молочных продуктов
agricultural 1. сельскохозяйственный 2. земледельческий
agricultural chemistry агрохимия
agricultural economics экономика сельского хозяйства
agricultural engineering агротехника
soil chemistry почвенная химия
herd стадо
herder пастух
roving herder кочевник
nomad [!n
domestication одомашнивание (животных)
cultivation 1. возделывание земли, обработка почвы 2. культи
вирование, выращивание, разведение
to cultivate 1. возделывать землю, обрабатывать почву 2. куль
тивировать, выращивать, разводить
cultivator культиватор
crop 1. сельскохозяйственная культура 2. урожай
ɔməd] кочевник
cultivation of crops выращивание сельскохозяйственных куль
òóð
intensive cultivation интенсивная обработка почвы
engineering crop (syn: genetically modifiedcrop, Mgcrop) ãå
нетически модифицированная сельскохозяйственная куль
òóðà
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food crop продовольственная культура
high-yielding crop 1. высокопродуктивная, высокоурожайная
культура 2. богатый урожай
industrial crop техническая культура
irrigated crop орошаемая, поливная культура
wheat пшеница
corn 1. зерно, зерновые 2. кукуруза, маис
rye [rai] ðîæü
barley ячмень
millet [!milit] просо
community 1. община 2. сообщество
farm community сельская община
implement 1. инструмент 2. орудие труда
agricultural implements сельскохозяйственные орудия труда,
сельскохозяйственный инвентарь
digging stick палка-копалка
hoe [hou] мотыга
scythe [sai
to scythe косить
plough (plow) [plau] ïëóã
to plough (plow) пахать
ingenious [in!d
irrigation ирригация, орошение
arid сухой, засушливый
arid and semiarid areas засушливые и полузасушливые
районы
to wane подходить к концу, кончаться
farming сельское хозяйство, фермерское хозяйство
subsi´stence farming натуральное (примитивное) сельское хо
зяйство
farming methods агротехника, методы возделывания сельскохо
зяйственных культур
reaper жатка, жатвенная машина
thresher (thrasher, thrashing machine) молотилка
combine комбайн
meat packing мясохладобойная промышленность, производство
мороженого мяса
meatpacking plant мясокомбинат
perishable скоропортящийся, портящийся
perishable foods скоропортящиеся продукты
specialties (specialities) специальный ассортимент (продуктов,
товаров)
ð]êîñà
i:njəs] искусный, замысловатый
Unit Two
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AGRICULTURE
market gardening товарное садоводство
truck farming товарное овощеводство
to adapt (to) 1. приспосабливать, адаптировать (к) 2. приспо
сабливаться, адаптироваться (к)
volatility изменчивость, неустойчивость
volatile изменчивый неустойчивый
rudimentary примитивный, элементарный
II
to feed (fed), syn. to nourish кормить, питать
fragile хрупкий, ломкий, непрочный
fragile soil хрупкая почва
vulnerable уязвимый, предрасположенный
vulnerability уязвимость, незащищ¸нность
disruption разрушение, распад, потрясение, катаклизм
to outpace опережать
conc
ómitant сопутствующий (об обстоятельствах)
security 1. безопасность 2. защита, охрана, гарантия
ecological security защита окружающей среды
food security продовольственная безопасность, обеспечен-
ность продовольствием
food insecurity необеспеченность продовольствием
to harness использовать (в определ¸нных целях)
farming practices агротехника, методы ведения сельского хо-
зяйства
indigenous местный, отечественный
to enhance 1. повышать 2. увеличивать, усиливать, усугублять
to enhance productivity повышать производительность
to compromise 1. пойти на компромисс 2. ставить под угрозу
to compromise ecological security подвергать опасности окру
жающую среду, экологию
consumerism консъюмеризм 1. вещизм, стремление к приобре
тению вещей 2. защита интересов потребителей
to dwindle уменьшаться, сокращаться, убывать
profit доход, прибыль
profitable прибыльный, выгодный, доходный, рентабельный
profitability прибыльность, доходность, рентабельность
soil почва
ash-enriched soil обогащ¸нная золой почва
to exhaust soil истощать почву
holding земельный участок
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