彭蒙惠英语：Soybean Farming Impacts Environment（在线收听）

Soybean Farming Impacts Environment

By Kevin G. Hall / © 2004, Knight Ridder Newspapers.

Distributed by Tribune Media Services / Images © KRT Direct

A boom in soybean production is transforming South American agriculture

1

A soybean boom is sweeping South America like a gold rush. Farmers with soy fever are plowing by moonlight, investing in jungles and dreaming of digging new canals to carry their soybeans from the continent’s vast and fertile interior to Atlantic and Pacific ports. The boom, fueled largely by China’s growing appetite, is transforming global agriculture and hastening the demise of the Western hemisphere’s last virgin savannahs and tropical rainforests.

Argentina’s farmers planted about 17 million acres of soybeans in 1997. Today, they plant more than 34 million. Brazilians planted 32 million acres in 1997. Now they plant 57 million. South America’s farmers are clearing acres as fast as they can burn them. Latin leaders, with some exceptions, are turning blind eyes to the devastation.

Global demand

Historically, Latin booms have gone bust, from rubber tapping to eucalyptus farming. But the soy boom appears to be built around real and durable demand: As standards of living have increased across much of the globe, so has the demand for meat products, cooking oils and sauces. Enter the soybean, low in cost and rich in protein. It’s an ideal additive to processed foods and the perfect protein supplement in animal feed to fatten pigs, poultry and cattle. According to John Baize, an international adviser to the American Soybean Association, the global demand for soybeans grew by 101 percent from 1990 to 2004.

Environment impact

In Bolivia, South America’s poorest country, roughly 500,000 acres of savannah and forests disappeared each year between 1993 and 2000, according to a report by The World Wildlife Fund last year. Most were cleared for farming or grazing cattle. The politically moderate environmental group wants South American governments to do a better job enforcing environmental laws.

Vocabulary Focus

demise (n) [di5maiz] the end of something that was previously considered to be powerful or great

virgin (adj) [5vE:dVin] relating to something that has not yet been cultivated or used by people

turn a blind eye to (idiom) to ignore something one knows is wrong

go bust (idiom) forced to close because of a lack of finances; to lose all or most of one’s money

Specialized Terms

savannah (n) 热带草原 a large, flat area of land covered with grass, usually with few trees, which is found in hot countries

rubber tapping (n phr) 橡胶采集 the process of drawing from a certain tropical tree the liquid used to make rubber

eucalyptus (n) 桉树，尤加利树 any of several types of trees, found especially in Australia, which produce a strong-smelling oil used in medicine and industry