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  3. Homegrown Isn’t Always Best The term "food miles" how far foot has traveled before you buy it—has entered the enlightened le

Homegrown Isn’t Always Best The term "food miles" how far foot has traveled before you buy it—has entered the enlightened le

admin2013-07-11  43
问题                         Homegrown Isn’t Always Best
    The term "food miles" how far foot has traveled before you buy it—has entered the enlightened lexicon. Environmental groups, especially in Europe, are pushing for labels that show how far food has traveled to get to the market, and books like Barbara King-solver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life contemplate the damage wrought by trucking, shipping and flying food from distant parts of the globe.
    There are many good reasons for eating local—freshness, purity, taste, community cohesion and preserving open space—but none of these benefits compares with the much-touted claim that eating local reduces fossil fuel consumption. On its face, the connection between lowering food miles and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is a no-brainer. Seventy-five percent of the apples sold in New York City come from the West Coast or overseas, the writer Bill McKibben says, even though the state produces far more apples than city residents consume. In light of this market redundancy, the only reasonable reaction, it seems, is to count food miles the way a dieter counts calories.
    But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment?
    Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption. According to this peer reviewed research, compelling evidence suggests that there is more or less to food miles than meets the eye. It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other en ergy-consuming aspects of production like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.
    Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clove-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6, 280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. These life-cycle measurements are causing environmentalists worldwide to rethink the logic of food miles. New Zealand’s most prominent environmental research organization, Landcare Research-Manaaki Whenua, explains that localism " is not always the most environmentally sound solution if more emissions are generated at other stages of the product life cycle than during transport."
    " Eat local" advocates—a passionate group of which I am one—are bound to interpret these findings as a threat. We shouldn’t. Not only do life cycle analyses offer genuine opportunities for environmentally efficient food production, but they also address several problems inherent in the eat-local philosophy.
Which of the following is true about the research responding to food miles labeling?
选项 A、It takes no account of the environmental cost in transportation.
B、It proves imported foods is more energy-efficient than a homegrown one.
C、It reveals the limitation of food localism.
D、It destroys the basis of the eat-local philosophy.
答案C
解析 本题考查事实细节。题干中the research responding to food miles labeling指的是第四、五段介绍的研究，因为第四段首句就指出它挑战了“食物里程与化石燃料消耗成正比”的假设。根据第四段末句可知，该研究不仅仅通过食物里程来计算产品的碳足迹，而且还计算产品生产过程中其他方面的能源消耗。可见运输中的环境因素仍然在考虑范围之内，排除[A]。第五段介绍了研究的结论，并举出了英国进口羔羊比本地羔羊制造出更少的二氧化碳排放的例子。从第五段末新西兰环境研究组织的一席话来看，英国羔羊的例子仅仅说明了进口食物不一定比自己种植食物更耗费能源，但是这个结果是有前提条件的，比如，英国的牧草差造成饲料喂羊，因此[B]不一定适用所有情况，也不是该研究得出的结论。同样，从第五段最后两句可知，这项研究让环保主义者反省食物里程的逻辑，环境研究组织指出本土主义并非最有利环境的方法，由此可知[C]正确。从第六段末句可知，生命周期分析确实指出了吃在本地哲学的若干内在问题，但没有完全否定“吃本地食物”的做法，[D]错在destroy。
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