5.5 Answer the questions to the text.

1. What is organic agriculture?

2. What are the advantages of organic agricultural production?

3. What is the difference between organic farming and traditional farming?

4. What pesticides and fertilizers are used in organic practices?

5.6 Translate the following words having the same stem. Check your translation with the help of a dictionary:

1. farm, to farm, farmer, farming, farm-hand, farmyard, farmland.

2. chemical, chemicals, chemist, chemistry, chemist’s.

5.7 Match the words with the definitions:

1. organic	a) a large quantity of something
2. defense	b) the natural home of a plant or animal
3. drought	c) waste matter from animals that is mixed with chemicals and put onto soil to produce better crops
4. habitat	d) the act of protecting something or someone from attack
5. manure	e) food that is needed to live, grow, and stay healthy
6. abundance	f) using farming or gardening methods without artificial chemicals, or produced or grown by these methods
7. nourishment	g) a long period of dry weather when there is not enough water for plants and animals to live

Text 6 Organic practices and species diversity

6.1 Read the following international words and translate them: national, ecological, production, management, biological, activity, minimal, harmony, per cent, popular, market, chemicals, region, result, coral, serious, natural, ecosystems, symptoms.

6.2 Read the following words, paying attention to the pronunciation: enhance, biodiversity, cycle, restore, safeguard, conventional, arable, flavor, skylark, invertebrate, butterflies, suffer, valuable, algal, exhibit, arthropod, influence, runoff.

6.3 Translate the following word-combinations into Russian: ecological production management system, management practices, species diversity, bird food, crop areas, spider numbers, spider species, ground water supplies, algal blooms, oxygen depletion.

6.4 Read and translate the text with the help of a dictionary.

T

Organic farming is a form of agriculture.

he National Organic Standards Board defines organic agriculture as an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony.

Because organic practices safeguard the environment and protect habitats, organic production conserves and promotes species diversity. In the United Kingdom, a study comparing biodiversity in organic farming and conventional farming systems found that organic farms had five times as many wild plants in arable fields and 57 percent more species.

Organic fruits and vegetables are becoming increasingly more popular in mainstream markets in the US. Not only are they healthy, but they can be more robust in flavor than typical produce.

The organic farms also had 25 percent more birds at the fields edge, 44 percent more in the field in autumn and winter, and 2.2 times as many breeding skylarks higher skylark breeding rates. In addition, they had 1.6 times as many of the invertebrate arthropods that make up bird food; thee times as many non-pest butterflies in the crop areas; one to five times as many spider numbers, and one to two times as many spider species. They also showed a significant decrease in aphid numbers.

Organic practices protect ground water supplies and avoid runoff of chemicals that can cause “dead zones” in larger bodies of water. Coastal environments exhibit symptoms of over-enrichment from these runoffs. Symptoms include harmful algal blooms, loss of sea grasses and coral reefs, and serious oxygen depletion. Coastal regions, as a result, have suffered reduced production of valuable fisheries and threats to biodiversity and ecosystems less resistant to natural and human influences.