下文内容为雅思口语考试中关于农业话题中，提高劳动力和投资技术相关的话题.
i hope that this first session, which i’ve calle a1 introucetion to british agriculture, will provie a helpful backgroun to the farm visits you’ll be oing next week.
i think i shoul start by emphasizing that agriculture still accounts for a very important part of this country’s economy. we are use to hearing the uk’s society an economy escribe as being ‘inustrial’ or even ‘post-inustrial’, but we mustn’t let this built us to the fact that agriculture an its inustries still account for aroun 20% of our gross national prouct.
this figure is especially impressive, i think, when you bear in min how very small a percentage of the uk workforce is employe in agriculture. this is not a recent evelopment-----you woul have to go back to 1750 or so to fin a majority of the workforce in this country working in agriculture. by the mile of the next century, in 1850 that is, it ha fallen sharply to 10%, an then to 3% by the mile of the twentieth century.
an now just 2% of the workforce contribute 20% of gnp. how is this efficiency achieve? well, my own view is that it owes a great eal to a history, over the last 50 or 60 years, of intelligent support by the state, mainly taking the form of helping famers to plan ahea. then the two other factors i shoul mention, both very important, are the high level of training amongst the agricultural workforce. an seconly, the recognition by farmers of the value of investing in technology.
now, although the uk is a fairly small country, the geology an climate vary a goo eal from region to region. for our purposes toay we can ivie the country broaly into three-----i’ve marke them on the map here ﹙inicates map﹚.
the region you’ll get to know best, of course, is the north, where we are at present. the lan here is generally hilly, an the soils thin. the climate up here, an you’ve alreay ha evience ofthis , is generally cool an wet. as you will see next week, the typical farm here in the north is a small, family-run concern, proucing mainly wool an timber for the market.
if we contrast that with the eastern region, over here﹙inicating on map﹚, the east is flatter an more low-lying, with fertile soils an a mixe climate. average farm-size is much bigger in the east, an farms are likely to be manage strictly on commercial lines. as for crops, well, the east is the uk’s great cereal-proucing region. however, increasingly significant areas are now also given over to high quality vegetables for supply irect to the supermarkets.
the thir broa region is the west, where it’s a ifferent story again. the climate is warmer than in the north an much wetter than in the east. the resulting rich soils in the west provie excellent pasture, an the farms there are quite large, typically aroun 800 hectares. the main proucts are milk, cheese an meat.
so, clearly, there are marke ifferences between regions, but this oes not prevent quite a strong sense of soliarity amongst the farming community as a whole, right across the country. this soliarity comes in part from the nee to present a unite front in ealing with other powerful interest-groups, such as government or the meia. it also owes something to the close cooperation between all the agricultural training colleges, through which the great majority of farmers pass at the beginning of their careers. an a thir factor making for soliarity is the national structure of the farmers’ union, of which virtually all farmers are members.
finally in this short talk, i woul like to say a little about the challenges facing farmers in the next…
上文内容仅供参考，考试请独立思考
