p. 1 Veg.Prod Licence 3rd year Academic Year 2019-2020
Scientific English Course Collected by Dr. Abi-Ayad f
Academic Text, Example 1
Use the strategy of Reading Academic text on the following text:
THE TRANSFORMATION OF JAPANESE AGRICULTURE
A radical change in the eating habits of the Japanese in the post-war years has been a dominant factor in inducing changes in the country's agriculture, to the mutual benefit of both producer and consumer. Traditionally, the staple diet in Japan was based on rice, fish and vegetables. Today, stimulated by Western ideas about food, and the inadequate supplies of fish resulting from over- fishing in home waters, the Japanese have acquired a taste for a more varied diet, including meat, eggs, milk and dairy produce. It has led to a spectacular expansion of livestock production, and the development of mixed farming, which is more profitable than the former cropping routine of rice, wheat and barley. In ten years' time the total value of the livestock output in Japan should represent one-third of the total agricultural production, and will be equivalent in value to the production of rice. By then, the demand for meat will have risen to five times the present level.
This vast programme of livestock development is based on a policy of pasture improvement concentrated increasingly in the uplands, where rice cultivation cannot be carried out. In a country
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with little or no experience in grassland management, the difficulties involved in building a new industry to produce meat and milk from grass on such a scale must have appeared truly formidable.
However, the Japanese tackled the problem systematically, and with the aid of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation have spent the past six years in intensive study, comparing "cut and carry"
methods of utilising pasture herbage with various grazing techniques, testing local and foreign types of grass and clover, and training technicians and advisory staff. To overcome the limitation imposed by the distance of upland pastures from the villages, and the difficulty of access, the Government has launched a road building programme.
Now it seems that there are encouraging prospects of further development of the livestock industry in the plains and valleys, for the introduction of new varieties of rice which mature in about 100 days instead of the normal 150 will release more land for pasture and fodder crops in areas where formerly only rice was grown.
The small size of the average farm - seven to eight acre s - would have been a serious obstacle to these changes in farm practice, but industrialisation, with its higher wages and promise of rapidly increasing living standards, is already attracting labour from the rural areas. A 35-40 per cent fall in the farming population by 1970 is forecast. The resultant economic pressure to form larger farms will therefore favour crop diversification and mechanisation.
(from New Scientist, 29th June, 1961)
