2024年4月2日发(作者：)

2015年6月英语四级阅读理解（二）翻译

Some of the world’s most significant problems never hit headlines. One

example comes from agriculture. Food riots and hunger make news. But the trend

lying behind these matters is rarely talked about. This is the decline in the growth

in yields of some of the world’s major crops.A new study by the University of

Minnesota and McGill University in Montreal looks at where, and how far, this

decline is occurring。

一些世界上最有影响的问题从不上头条新闻。其中一个例子就是农业问题。粮食暴动

和饥饿产生新闻，但躺在这些问题背后的趋势却很少被谈及。这是因为一些世界主要农作

物产区的产量在下降。蒙特利尔的明尼苏达和麦吉尔大学的一项新研究着眼于研究这种正

在发生的下降趋势在哪，还有多远。

The authors take a vast number of data points for the four most important

crops: rice, wheat corn and soybeans(大豆). They find that on between 24% and

39% of all harvested areas, the improvement in yields that tood place before the

1980s slowed down in the 1990s and 2000s。

研究人员采集了四个最重要农作物的大量的数据点：大米，小麦、玉米和大豆。他们

发现，1980年代以前发生的农作物产量从24%上升至39%，在1990年代至2000年代慢慢

降低了。

There are two worrying features of the slowdown. One is that it has been

particularly sharp in the world’s most populous(人口多的) countries, India and

China. Their ability to feed themselves has been an important source of relative

stability both within the countries and on world food markets. That self-sufficiency

cannot be taken for granted if yields continue to slow down or reverse。

这种放缓有两个令人担忧的特征。其中之一是，它在世界上人口最多的（人口多的）

国家，印度和中国，尤为严重。他们养活自己的能力已经成为各国和世界粮食市场相对稳

定的一个重要来源。如果收成继续减缓，那么自给自足就不能被认为是想当然的了。

Second, yield growth has been lower in wheat and rice than in corn and

soyabeans. This is problematic because wheat and rice are more important as

foods, accounting for around half of all calories consumed. Corn and soyabeans

are more important as feed grains. The authors note that “we have preferentially

focused our crop improvement efforts on feeding animals and cars rather than on

crops that feed people and are the basis of food security in much of the world。”

第二，小麦和大米的产量增长已经低于玉米和大豆。这是有问题的，因为小麦和大米

作为食物更加重要，约占所有消耗热量的一半左右。玉米和大豆更重要的是作为饲料。研

究人员指出，“我们更加偏向于在饲养动物和汽车燃料方面提高作物产量，而不是在我们人

吃的作物上，而这才是世界上大部分地区粮食安全的基础。

The report qualifies the more optimistic findings of another new paper which

suggests that the world will not have to dig up a lot more land for farming in order

to feed 9 billion people in 2050, as the Food and Agriculture Organisation has

argued。