2020年12月19日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：British Agriculture

2020年12月19日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：British Agriculture

England was one of the first nations in the modern period to increase the efficiency of its agricultural production, making it possible to produce the same or more while using fewer workers. By the end of the seventeenth century, England was already in advance of most of continental Europe in agricultural productivity, with only about 60percent of its workers involved primarily in food production. Although the actual number of workers in agriculture continued to grow until the middle of the nineteenth century, the proportion declined steadily to about 36 percent at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to about22 percent in the mid-nineteenth century (when the absolute number was at its maximum), and to less than 10 percent at the beginning of the twentieth century.

1.Which of the following can be inferred from paragraph 1 about agricultural production in the seventeenth century?

O England had stopped focusing on increasing its agricultural productivity.

O In England, the proportion of workers involved in food production increased rapidly.

O In most of continental Europe, more than 60 percent of workers were primarily involved in food production.

O In most of continental Europe, the number of workers in agriculture had begun to decrease.

The means by which England increased its agricultural productivity owed much to trial-and-error experimentation with new crops and new crop rotations.Turnips, clover, and other fodder crops(plants used to feed livestock) were introduced from the Netherlands in the sixteenth century, and became widely diffused in the seventeenth.Probably the most important agricultural innovation before scientific agriculture was introduced in the nineteenth century was the development of so-called convertible husbandry, involving the alternation of field crops with temporary pastures in place of permanent cultivated fields and pastures.This had the double advantage of restoring the fertility of the soil through improved rotation, including leguminous crops, and of maintaining a larger number of livestock, thus producing more manure for fertilizer as well as more meat, dairy produce, and wool.Many landowners and farmers also experimented with selective breeding of livestock.

2.In paragraph 1, why does the author present the change over time of the percentage of England's workers who were employed in agriculture?

O To explain why workers in Europe sought jobs in agriculture more than in any other sector of the economy

O To compare the skills of England's agricultural workers with those of the rest of Europe

O To indicate the rate and extent of improvements in England's agricultural productivity

O To show how the proportion of workers in agriculture changes as the proportion of land in agricultural use changes

3.According to paragraph 2, next to the introduction of scientific agriculture in the nineteenth century, the most important change in the way the English produced food was

O the introduction of fodder crops from the Netherlands

O the recognition that trial-and-error experimentation did not work

O the selective breeding of livestock

O the alternating use of land for crop cultivation and animal pasture

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