09/01/14 16:03:23
>>297の続きになります。また長文になりますが訳の方よろしくお願いします。
There's little relief for the food crisis in the farm bill now wending through Congress. It essentially maintains the status quo,
continuing price supports and retaining the policy of requiring developing nations to use the U.S. aid they get to purchase American crops.
That said, if a new WTO agreement is reached lowering subsidies, the farm bill will have to be amended later. Mary Kay Thatcher,
director of public policy at the American Farm Bureau Federation, which represents agriculture interests,
says that if the WTO agreement is reached, "we can make the farm bill fit."
While food policy remains tangled, there's a lot of new thinking about agriculture methods that promises productivity increases in the big food-producing countries and for small farms in developing nations.
After major farm production gains worldwide between the 1940s and 1970s, investments by nations tailed off. Now that seems to be reversing.
The technology advances that have swept other business segments are now being felt full force in U.S. agriculture.