新西兰英语 32 World Food Conference

　　Today is the last day of the World Food Conference in Rome. New Zealand has sent 11 people to this conference, with Jim Anderton, Minister of Agriculture, as the leader of this group. Along with Jim Anderton are other politicians, a climate scientist and a fisheries representative.
The conference opened on June 3rd with a speech by the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, who talked about the world food problems and especially how millions of people today are hungry.
Jim Anderton made a speech about New Zealand’s part in feeding the world. He said we are a successful country in agriculture and one reason for this is that we got rid of government subsidies¹ on farming in the 1980s. A subsidy² is money paid by the government to the farmer so that we, the consumers, can pay less for milk and other farm produce. Many EU countries and the United States are still paying subsidies to their farmers and this makes it hard for African countries to sell food to other countries. It is not economic for them to compete with EU countries in producing food. Another reason New Zealand has been successful, said Mr Anderton, is the removal³ of taxes on imports. He believes that free trade is better.
Not everyone agrees with him. The Green Party representative at the conference, Sue⁴ Kedgley, says that she thinks free trade does not help poor countries.
Mr Anderton also told the conference that New Zealand will give $7 million to the World Food Programme and $2.5 million to International Agricultural Research. The New Zealand government has already planned to spend $700 million over the next 10 years in our own country on research on food production.

1 subsidies   

n.补贴，津贴，补助金( subsidy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• European agriculture ministers failed to break the deadlock over farm subsidies. 欧洲各国农业部长在农业补贴问题上未能打破僵局。
• Agricultural subsidies absorb about half the EU's income. 农业补贴占去了欧盟收入的大约一半。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 subsidy   

n.补助金，津贴

参考例句：

• The university will receive a subsidy for research in artificial intelligence.那个大学将得到一笔人工智能研究的补助费。
• The living subsidy for senior expert's family is included in the remuneration.报酬已包含高级专家家人的生活补贴。

3 removal   

n.去除，消除；挪走，移走，搬迁

参考例句：

• After the removal of the soup,fish was served.汤撤去后，鱼就上来了。
• The factory announced its removal to another town.这家工厂宣布迁往另一座城镇。

4 sue   

vt.控告，起诉；vi.请求，追求，起诉

参考例句：

• If you don't pay me the money,I'll sue you.如果你不付给我钱，我就告你。
• The war criminals sue for peace.战犯求和。