VOA慢速英语 2007 1023a

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

The fall meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary¹ Fund just took place in Washington. Earlier, the bank used its latest World Development Report to call for more investment in agriculture in developing countries.

 
World Bank Group Chief Economist² Francois Bourguignon and Kathy Sierra, vice³ president of sustainable development, release the World Development Report
The World Bank says agriculture must be at the center of development issues if international goals are to be met. These goals are to cut extreme poverty and hunger in half by two thousand fifteen.

The report says agricultural and rural areas have suffered from underinvestment over the past twenty years. Seventy-five percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas. But the bank says only four percent of official development assistance goes to agriculture in developing countries.

Africa south of the Sahara depends on agriculture for economic growth. The World Bank says public spending there for farming is also just four percent of total government spending and taxes are high.

Recently the World Bank has faced criticism of its assistance to agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. That criticism comes in a new report from the bank's own Independent Evaluation⁴ Group. 

In the nineteen eighties and nineties African governments faced severe financial problems. As a result, the bank urged them to reduce their support for agriculture.

The idea was that market forces would push agricultural growth. But the report says private business failed to replace government support for agriculture. The result? High fertilizer prices, reduced credit and lack of improved seeds.

The report compares agricultural performance between nineteen eighty-seven and two thousand one with levels in South Asia and Latin America. Cereal production in South Asia, for example, increased while poverty levels decreased. But cereal production and poverty levels in southern Africa were unchanged. Cereal production was only one-third the level of Latin America.

In many sub-Saharan nations, more than sixty percent of the people work in agriculture. Yet slow agricultural growth combined with fast population growth means that most countries are still trying to get enough food.

World Bank officials differed with some of the observations in the report. But they say the bank is already investing more in agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. 

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson.

1 monetary   

adj.货币的，钱的；通货的；金融的；财政的

参考例句：

• The monetary system of some countries used to be based on gold.过去有些国家的货币制度是金本位制的。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

2 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

3 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

4 evaluation   

n.估价，评价；赋值

参考例句：

• I attempted an honest evaluation of my own life.我试图如实地评价我自己的一生。
• The new scheme is still under evaluation.新方案还在评估阶段。