TEXT B: WORLD AGRICULTURE

Over 10000 years since agriculture began to be developed, people everywhere have discovered the food value of wild plants and animals and domesticated and bred them. The most important crops are cereals as wheat, rice, barley, corn and rye; sugarcane and sugar beets; meat animals such as sheep, cattle, goats, and pigs or swine; poultry such as chickens, ducks, turkeys; animal products such as milk, cheese, eggs; and nuts and oils. Fruits, vegetables and olives are also major foods for people. Feed grains for animals include soybeans, field corn and sorghum.

Agricultural income is also derived from nonfood crops such as rubber, fiber plants, tobacco, oil seeds used in synthetic chemical compounds, as well as animals raised for pelts. Conditions that determine what is raised in an area include climate, water supply and waterworks, terrain and ecology.

In the mid-1990s, 48 percent of the world’s labor force was employed in agriculture. The distribution ranged from 61 percent of the economically active population in Asia to less than 3 percent in the United States and Canada. In Africa the figure was 60 percent; in South America 20 percent and in Europe 9 percent.

Farm size varies from region to region. In the 1990s the average for Canadian farms was about 264 hectares per farm; for farms in the United States 190 hectares. By contrast, the average size of a small land holding in the Philippines was 2.6 hectares.

Size also depends on the purpose of the farm. Commercial farming or production for cash, usually takes place on large holding. The latifundia of Latin America are large, privately owned estates worked by tenant labor.

Single-crop plantations produce tea, rubber and cocoa. Wheat farms are most efficient when they comprise thousands of hectares and can be worked by teams of people and machines. Australian sheep stations and other livestock farms must be large to provide grazing for thousands of animals. The agricultural plots of Chinese communes and the cooperative farms held by Peruvian communities are other necessarily large agricultural units, as were the collective farms that were owned and operated by state employees in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Individual substance farms or small-family mixed-farm operations are decreasing in number in developed countries but are still numerous in the developing countries of Africa and Asia. A back-to-the-land movement in the United States partially reversed the decline of small farms in the 1970s.

Nomadic herders range over large areas in sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan and Lapland; the herding is a major part of agriculture in such areas as Mongolia.

Much of the foreign exchange earned by a country may be derived from a single agricultural commodity; for example, Sri Lanka depends on tea, Denmark specializes in dairy products, Australia in wool, and New Zealand in meat products. In the United States wheat, corn and soybeans have become major foreign exchange commodities in recent decades.

The importance of an individual country as an exporter of agricultural products depends on many variables. Among them is the possibility that the country is too little developed industrially to produce manufactured goods in sufficient quantity or technical sophistication. Such agricultural exporters include China with cocoa and Myanmar (formerly Burma) with rice. However, a developed country may produce surpluses that are not needed by its own population; this is the case with the United States, Canada and some western European countries.

Because nations depend on agriculture not only for food but for national income and row materials for industry as well, trade in agriculture is a constant international concern. It is regulated by international agreements such as the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT), The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and by trading regions such as the European Community.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations directs much attention to agricultural trade and policies.

I. Answer the questions:

1. How did agriculture begin to be developed?

2. Does farm size vary from region to region?

3. How does the size of the farm depend?

4. Do nations depend on agriculture only for food?

5. Which trade international agreements do you know?

6. Which conditions that determine what is raised in an area do you know?

II. Compete the sentences using the correct word order:

1. population; a; may; developed; own; surpluses; country; its; that; needed; not;

produce; are; by.

2. recent; in; commodities; the; decades; United States; in; and; wheat; exchange; become; foreign; corn; have; soybeans; major.

3. foreign; much; commodity; of; agricultural; the; single; exchange; a; from; may; earned; derived; by; be; a; country.

4. people; fruits; foods; vegetables; for; and; major; olives; also; are.

5. field; feed; sorghum; grains; corn; for; and; animals; soybeans; include.

6. employed; 48; labor; agriculture; in; world’s; percent; was; of; force; the.

7. varies; farm; region; size; to; region; from.

8. also; farm; the; depends; size; of; on; purpose; the.

9. and; tea, cocoa; single-crop; rubber; produce; plantations.

10. developed; number; decreasing; individual; in; substance; countries; farms; are; or; mixed-farm; small-family; operations; in.

III. Think about farms in Ukraine.

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