This article is all about organic farming and chemical fertilizers reading answers. You can practice for your exam with the help of the passage and the questions and answers. These IELTS reading answers are very crucial for your IELTS exam preparation. So, let’s check out!
Also Read: Air Traffic Control in the USA IELTS Reading Answers: Grab the IELTS Reading Details!
Organic Farming and Chemical Fertilizers IELTS Reading Answers
Part One
The world’s population continues to climb. And despite the rise of high-tech agriculture, 800 million people don’t get enough to eat. Clearly, it’s time to rethink the food we eat and where it comes from. Feeding 9 billion people will take more than the same old farming practices, especially if we want to do it without felling rainforests and planting every last scrap of prairie. Finding food for all those people will tax farmers’ – and researchers’ – ingenuity to the limit.
Yet already, precious aquifers that provide irrigation water for some of the world’s most productive farmlands are drying up or filling with seawater, and arable land in China is eroding to create vast dust storms that redden sunsets as far away as North America. “Agriculture must become the solution to environmental problems in 50 years.
If we don’t have systems that make the environment better – not just hold the fort-then we’re in trouble,” says Kenneth Cassman, an agronomist at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. That view was echoed in January by the Curry report, a government panel that surveyed the future of farming and food in Britain.
Part Two
It’s easy to say agriculture has to do better, but what should this friendly farming of the future look like? Concerned consumers come up short at this point, facing what appears to be an ever-widening ideological divide.
In one corner are the techno-optimists who put their faith in genetically modified crops, improved agrochemicals and computer-enhanced machinery; in the other are advocates of organic farming, who reject artificial chemicals and embrace back-to-nature techniques such as composting.
Both sides cite plausible science to back their claims to the moral high ground, and both bring enough passion to the debate for many people to come away thinking we’re faced with a stark choice between two mutually incompatible options.
Part Three
Not so. If you take off the ideological blinkers and simply ask how the world can produce the food it needs with the least environmental cost, a new middle way opens. The key is sustainability: whatever we do must not destroy the capital of soil and water we need to keep on producing.
Like today’s organic farming, the intelligent farming of the future should pay much more attention to the health of its soil and the ecosystem it’s part of. But intelligent farming should also make shrewd and locally appropriate use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
The most crucial ingredient in this new style of agriculture is not chemicals but information about what’s happening in each field and how to respond. Yet ironically, this key element may be the most neglected today.
Part Four
Clearly, organic farming has all the warm, fuzzy sentiment on its side. An approach that eschews synthetic chemicals surely runs no risk of poisoning land and water. And its emphasis on building up natural ecosystems seems to be good for everyone. Perhaps these easy assumptions explain why sales of organic food across Europe are increasing by at least 50 per cent per year.
Part Five
Going organic sounds idyllic – but it’s native, too. Organic agriculture has its own suite of environmental costs, which can be worse than those of conventional farming, especially if it were to become the world norm. But more fundamentally, the organic versus-chemical debate focuses on the wrong question. The issue isn’t what you put into a farm, but what you get out of it, both in terms of crop yields and pollutants, and what condition the farm is in when you’re done.
Also Read: The Rocket from East to West IELTS Reading Answers: Let’s Grab the IELTS Exam Preparation Material!
Part Six
Take chemical fertilisers, which deliver nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient, to crops along with some phosphorus and potassium. It is a mantra of organic farming that these fertilisers are unwholesome, and plant nutrients must come from natural sources. But in fact, the main environmental damage done by chemical fertilisers as opposed to any other kind is through greenhouse gases-carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels used in their synthesis and nitrogen oxides released by their degradation. Excess nitrogen from chemical fertilisers can pollute groundwater, but so can excess nitrogen from organic manures.
Part Seven
On the other hand, relying solely on chemical fertilisers to provide soil nutrients without doing other things to build healthy soil is damaging. Organic farmers don’t use chemical fertilisers, so they are very good at building soil fertility by working crop residues and manure into the soil, rotating grain with legumes that fix atmospheric nitrogen, and other techniques.
Part Eight
This generates vital soil nutrients and also creates a soil that is richer in organic matter, so it retains better and is hospitable to the crop’s roots and creatures such as earthworms that help maintain soil fertility. Such soil also holds water better and therefore make more efficient use of both rainfall and irrigation water. And organic matter ties up CO2 in the soil, helping to offset emissions from burning fossil fuels and reduce global warming.
Part Nine
Advocates of organic farming like to point out that fields managed in this way can produce yields just as high as fields juiced up with synthetic fertilizers. For example, Bill Liebhardt, research manager at the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, recently compiled the results of such comparisons for corn, wheat, soybeans and tomatoes in the US and found that the organic fields averaged between 94 and 100 per cent of the yields of nearby conventional crops.
Part Ten
But this optimistic picture tells only half the story. Farmers can’t grow such crops every year if they want to maintain or build soil nutrients without synthetic fertilizers. They need to alternate with soil-building crops such as pasture grasses and legumes such as alfalfa. So in the long term, the yield of staple grains such as wheat, rice and corn must go down.
This is the biggest cost of organic farming. Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, estimates that if farmers worldwide gave up the 80 million tonnes of synthetic fertilizers they now use each year, total grain production would fall by at least half. Either farmers would have to double the amount of land they cultivate – at catastrophic cost to natural habitats – or billions of people would starve.
Part Eleven
That doesn’t mean farmers couldn’t get by with less fertilizer. Technologically advanced farmers in wealthy countries, for instance, can now monitor their yields hectare by hectare, or even more finely, throughout a huge field. They can then target their fertilizer to the parts of the field where it will do the most good, instead of responding to average conditions.
This increases yield and decreases fertilizer use. Eventually, farmers may incorporate long-term weather forecasts into their planning as well, so that they can cut back on fertilizer use when the weather is likely to make harvests poor anyway, says Ron Olson, an agronomist with Cargill Fertilizer in Tampa, Florida.
Part Twelve
Organic techniques certainly have their benefits, especially for poor farmers. But strict `organic agriculture”, which prohibits certain technologies and allows others, isn’t always better for the environment. Take herbicides, for example. These can leach into waterways and poison both wildlife and people. Just last month, researchers led by Tyrone Hayes at the University of California at Berkeley found that even low concentrations of atrazine, the most commonly used weed killer in the US, can prevent frog tadpoles from developing properly.
Also Read: The Future of Work IELTS Reading Answers: Let’s Get Prepared to Score Well With the Best Content!
Questions Related to IELTS Reading Passage
Question Number One
Following are a few statements given from the passage above. You have to check the answers from the passage and write them correctly.
#1. ____________ must become the solution to environmental problems in 50 years.
Answer: Agriculture
#2. Sales of organic food across Europe are increasing by at least ____________ per year.
Answer: 50 per cent
#3. Excess nitrogen from chemical fertilisers can _____________, but so can excess nitrogen from organic manures.
Answer: pollute groundwater
#4. Farmers can’t grow such crops every year if they want to maintain or build soil nutrients without _______________.
Answer: synthetic fertilizers
#5. Despite the rise of high-tech agriculture, ____________ people don’t get enough to eat.
Answer: 800 million
Question Number Two
Look at the statements below and after reading them, write TRUE or FALSE in front of them.
TRUE – If the statement agrees with the information that is given above in the passage.
FALSE – If the statement disagrees with the information that is given above in the passage.
#1. Technologically advanced farmers in wealthy countries, can now monitor their yields hectare by hectare, or even more finely, throughout a huge field.
Answer: TRUE
#2. Relying solely on chemical fertilizers to provide soil nutrients without doing other things to build healthy soil is not damaging.
Answer: FALSE
#3. Organic techniques certainly have their benefits, especially for poor farmers.
Answer: TRUE
#4. The world’s population continues to climb.
Answer: TRUE
#5. Fundamentally, the organic versus-chemical debate focuses on the wrong question.
Answer: TRUE
Also Read: The Triune Brain Reading Answers: Catch the Information for the IELTS Reading Test!
Conclusion
The IELTS Reading test is an important component of the IELTS exam. It is designed to evaluate the reading skills of candidates who are planning to study or work in English-speaking countries. The test consists of three sections and lasts for a total of 60 minutes.
The first section of the test contains short texts or advertisements and requires candidates to answer multiple-choice questions. The second section contains longer texts and candidates are required to identify information, matching information, sentence completion, and True/False/Not Given questions. The final section of the test contains a longer, more complex text and requires candidates to answer a range of questions, including identifying the writer’s views and matching information.
To perform well on the IELTS Reading test, candidates should practice their reading skills, develop strategies for answering different types of questions, and become familiar with the format of the test. Candidates should also work on building their vocabulary and improving their speed and accuracy in reading comprehension.
In conclusion, the IELTS Reading test is a challenging but important component of the IELTS exam. By practicing regularly and developing effective strategies, candidates can improve their performance on this test and achieve their desired scores.
English 
Hindi