UNIT 5Culture Background Analysis-【新课程能力培养】2023-2024学年新教材高中英语选择性必修第一册学习手册（人教版）

UNIT 5　WORKING THE LAND Culture Background Analysis Organic Food:Why? Europe is now the biggest market for organ- ic food in the world,expanding by 25 percent a year over the past 10 years. So what is the at- traction of organic food for some people? The re- ally important thing is that organic food sounds more “natural” . Eating organic food is a way of defining oneself to be natural,good,caring,dif- ferent from the junk-food-eating masses. Unlike conventional farming, the organic approach means farming with natural rather than man-made fertilisers and pesticides. Techniques such as crop rotation improve soil quality and help organic farmers compensate for the absence of man-made chemicals. As a method of food production, organic farming is, however, ineffi- cient in its use of labour and land;there are se- vere limits to how much food can be produced. Also,the environmental benefits of not using ar- tificial fertilisers are tiny compared with the a- mount of carbon dioxide emitted by transporting food. Organic farming is often claimed to be safer than conventional farming. Yet studies into or- ganic farming worldwide continue to reject this claim. An extensive review by the UK Food Standards Agency found that there was no statis- tically significant difference between organic and conventional crops. Even where results indi- cated there was evidence of a difference,the re- viewers found no sign that these differences would have any noticeable effect on health. The simplistic claim that organic food is more nutritious than conventional food