考前模拟：2008年12月阅读真题及名师精讲

　　3. established athletic footwear industry

　　根据题干中的Blue Ribbon Sports和North America定位到原文第三段第三句。 题干中提及公司没有雇用专家是因为在北美缺少什么，短语the absence of 是对原文中的there was no的同义转换。所以答案是established athletic footwear industry。

　　4. informally

　　此题的关键词非常明确，就是communication，定位在文章倒数第四行：Communication was informal。题干中需要填写动词词组carry out的修饰词，应该是副词，所以答案为informally.

　　5. The team spirit and shared valves of the athletes.

　　根据题干结构分析，可以得知答案应该在句中充当主语quality的修饰，即为定语，是名词性或形容词性结构。根据题干关键词Bowerman’s teams 和 the basis of Nike’s early management style，以及依次而下的顺序出题原则，可以定位在文章结尾。

　　Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

　　Passage One

　　Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.

　　Sustainable development is applied to just about everything from energy to clean water and economic growth, and as a result it has become difficult to question either the basic assumptions behind it or the way the concept is put to use. This is especially true in agriculture, where sustainable development is often taken as the sole measure of progress without a proper appreciation of historical and cultural perspectives.

　　To start with, it is important to remember that the nature of agriculture has changed markedly throughout history, and will continue to do so .medieval agriculture in northern Europe fed, clothed and sheltered a predominantly rural society with a much lower population density than it is today. It had minimal effect on biodiversity, and any pollution it caused was typically localized. In terms of energy use and the nutrients(营养成分)captured in the product it was relatively inefficient.

　　Contrast this with farming since the start of the industrial revolution. Competition from overseas led farmers to specialize and increase yields. Throughout this period food became cheaper, safe and more reliable. However, these changes have also led to habitat(栖息地)loss and to diminishing biodiversity.

　　What’s more, demand for animal products in developing countries is growing so fast that meeting it will require an extra 300 million tons of grain a year by 2050.yet the growth of cities and industry is reducing the amount of water available for agriculture in many regions.

　　All this means that agriculture in the 21stcentury will have to be very different from how it was in the 20th.thiswill require radical thinking. For example, we need to move away from the idea that traditional practices are inevitably more sustainable than new ones. We also need to abandon the notion that agriculture can be “zero impact”. The key will be to abandon the rather simple and static measures of sustainability, which centre on the need to maintain production without increasing damage.

　　Instead we need a more dynamic interpretation, one that looks at the pros and cons(正反两方面)of all the various way land is used. There are many different ways to measure agricultural performance besides food yield: energy use, environmental costs, water purity, carbon footprint and biodiversity. It is clear, for example, that the carbon of transporting tomatoes from Spain to the UK is less than that of producing them in the UK with additional heating and lighting. But we do not know whether lower carbon footprints will always be better for biodiversity.