The Story of Grass - Test 4

C1 Advanced · Gapped Text · Cambridge English Advanced 1, Cambridge University Press

You are going to read part of a review of a book about grass. Six paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A-G the one which fits each gap (1–6). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.

The Story of Grass

John Carey reviews The Forgiveness of Nature; The Story of Grass by Graham Harvey

But it's not just institutions that incur Harvey's anger, the phasing out of grass has also compounded the greenhouse effect. Grasslands take carbon from the atmosphere and lock it safely in the soil. They are far more effective at doing this than tropical rain forests, and Harvey contends that a return to grass-based husbandry would crucially alleviate global warming.

Its presence is a result of the clearing of forest land to make way for crops and pasture. While many deplore this development it is the real result of the need to supply cheap food.

With this system, cattle graze on fields consisting just of grass, known as pastures. After four years these are ploughed up and planted with food crops. At the same time, other fields on the same farm, which will now have been exhausted by food production, so they are returned to pasture again.

The result is depressingly predictable – all these substances damage the soil and destroy its wildlife, from micro-organisms up to earthworms, insects and small mammals. The landscape falls silent.

Farming of this kind is now virtually obsolete in the country, largely because farm subsidies encourage farmers to abandon crop rotation based on grass and to rely on chemical fertilisers instead.

At first, yields of these crops were huge, drawing on organic matter in the topsoil accumulated over centuries. But in the next 30 years, they fell by three-quarters. Then came the 'high' winds of the 1930s, when the degraded soil literally blew away.

This particular species spread with frightening speed in the 20th century. By 1984, the total area of species-rich grassland remaining in the country was just 3% of what it had been in 1930, and the destruction is continuing to the present day.

This traditional, nature-based farming practice received a boost in the 17th century, when it was discovered that fertility was enormously increased if the pastures incorporated clover flowers, since clover has the ability to convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into soluble soil nitrates. In the century and a half to 1850, grain yields and animal products doubled because of the clover revolution, and British farming was able to feed an extra seven million people as the industrial revolution spurred population growth.

When these incentives were introduced in the last quarter of the 20th century, farmers scrambled to get rid of their cattle, plough up their pastures, and turn their farms into various kinds of cereal monocultures, with fields full of single crops. These need heavy applications of chemicals to maintain yields. The high levels of artificial nitrogen that result make the crops susceptible to disease, particularly mildew, which have to be countered with yet more chemicals in the form of fungicides.

Intensive agriculture has had a similar effect on hay meadows. These used to flourish in Britain, and their mix of grasses supported the evolution of a rich diversity of animals and birds. Covering grassland with artificial fertiliser reverses this process. It allows one or two fast-growing varieties to eliminate the others, together with the wildlife they supported, producing monotonous acres of rye-grass.

In Harvey's view, British agriculture seems little more than an elaborate means of transferring money from the taxpayer to the pockets of the agrochemical industry, and laying waste the countryside in the process. The more intensive the farm, the more its owner can claim public subsidy. The European Union's common agricultural policy does not escape his attention. It has, in his opinion, outlawed the traditional mixed farm, since it requires farmers to choose between intensive crop or intensive cattle production.

Harvey runs the story of British agriculture alongside the story of the American prairies – flat grasslands without trees. Again the hero is grass, and the villains are well-meaning farmers with no understanding of ecology. The earliest American settlers, in the 17th century, saw no use for the prairies and blotted them down. In fact, although arid, they were a rich and delicate ecosystem, supporting vast herds of bison which, at their peak, equalled in weight the entire current human population of North America. In three generations, all this was wiped out. The bison were slaughtered, and the prairies ploughed up for wheat and maize.

Now the prairies have to be dosed with artificial fertiliser and pesticides, and the government spends millions of dollars on irrigation. It is a depressing picture which mirrors the story across the Atlantic.

There is no doubting the radical importance of Graham Harvey's message. His case is that grass is unique among the world's plants not just in its antic-to-everyone adaptability and species diversity, but in the power of its elaborate root system to nourish soil with useful carbon compounds. The method of land management that turns this to advantage is mixed crop and cattle farming using crop rotation. ___ This traditional, nature-based farming practice received a boost in the 17th century, when it was discovered that fertility was enormously increased if the pastures incorporated clover flowers, since clover has the ability to convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into soluble soil nitrates. In the century and a half to 1850, grain yields and animal products doubled because of the clover revolution, and British farming was able to feed an extra seven million people as the industrial revolution spurred population growth. ___ When these incentives were introduced in the last quarter of the 20th century, farmers scrambled to get rid of their cattle, plough up their pastures, and turn their farms into various kinds of cereal monocultures, with fields full of single crops. These need heavy applications of chemicals to maintain yields. The high levels of artificial nitrogen that result make the crops susceptible to disease, particularly mildew, which have to be countered with yet more chemicals in the form of fungicides. ___ Intensive agriculture has had a similar effect on hay meadows. These used to flourish in Britain, and their mix of grasses supported the evolution of a rich diversity of animals and birds. Covering grassland with artificial fertiliser reverses this process. It allows one or two fast-growing varieties to eliminate the others, together with the wildlife they supported, producing monotonous acres of rye-grass. ___ In Harvey's view, British agriculture seems little more than an elaborate means of transferring money from the taxpayer to the pockets of the agrochemical industry, and laying waste the countryside in the process. The more intensive the farm, the more its owner can claim public subsidy. The European Union's common agricultural policy does not escape his attention. It has, in his opinion, outlawed the traditional mixed farm, since it requires farmers to choose between intensive crop or intensive cattle production. ___ Harvey runs the story of British agriculture alongside the story of the American prairies – flat grasslands without trees. Again the hero is grass, and the villains are well-meaning farmers with no understanding of ecology. The earliest American settlers, in the 17th century, saw no use for the prairies and blotted them down. In fact, although arid, they were a rich and delicate ecosystem, supporting vast herds of bison which, at their peak, equalled in weight the entire current human population of North America. In three generations, all this was wiped out. The bison were slaughtered, and the prairies ploughed up for wheat and maize. ___ Now the prairies have to be dosed with artificial fertiliser and pesticides, and the government spends millions of dollars on irrigation. It is a depressing picture which mirrors the story across the Atlantic.

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