GCT综合英语第7单位课文翻译.doc

仅做参考 好好学习，天天向上 Unit 7 Part B Global Food Insecurity 全球粮食匮乏 A particular problem directly related to continuing population growth is growing global food insecurity. For a variety of reasons the demand for food by the consumer has begun to outrun the capacity to provide. Where all attention was previously focused on population growth as the sole source of demand on available food stocks, today an equally important source of demand has become apparent and that is affluence. As per capita income increases, purchasing power climbs and with it a demand for higher quality foods , especially foods of animal origin such as meat, eggs, milk, and milk products. Eating meat can be considered an inefficient way of utilizing grain. In the United States it takes three pounds of grain to produce a pound of poultry; 5 : 1 is the ratio for pork, and 10:1 for beef. In the end, Americans eat eighty percent of all the grain they consume indirectly, first using it for feed and then consuming the meat. On the basis of these data, Americans consume the equivalent of one ton of grain a year while inhabitants of poorer countries consume one fifth as much. Outside our borders, other nations with growing economies but without comparable agriculture have also increased their appetites for animal protein. Hence, sixty percent of North American agricultural sales has been to nations whose people are already rather well fed. At this time, the approximately one billion people of the developed world feed enough grain to their livestock and poultry to provide minimal nutritional requirements to another 2 billion people. Over the last twenty years, the rich minority of the world has doubled its meat consumption. This is, however, not due to eating twice as much meat per capita, although there has been some rise here. Rather, there are twice as many people with the money to buy a higher quality protein-rich diet. The net result is that while world population has been growing at 1. 6 percent and agric