今天要教给大家summary，即摘要题型的解题技巧，我们以剑桥雅思7阅读真题The True Cost of Food为例，为大家作详细解读，供大家参考和学习。接下来请看雅思内容：雅思阅读真题解析-摘要题
The True Cost of Food
A For more than forty years the cost of food has been rising. It has now reached a point where a growing number of people believe that it is far too high, and that bringing it down will be one of the great challenges of the twenty first century. That cost, however, is not in immediate cash. In the west at least, most food is now far cheaper to buy in relative terms than it was in 1960. The cost is in the collateraldamage of the very methods of food production that have made the food cheaper: in the pollution of water, the enervation of soil, the destruction of wildlife, the harm to animal welfare and the threat to human health caused by modern industrial agriculture.
B First mechanisation, then mass use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, then monocultures, then battery rearing of livestock, and now genetic engineering - the onward march of intensive farming has seemed unstoppable in the last half-century, as the yields of produce have soared. But the damage it has caused has been colossal. In Britain, for example, many of our best-loved farmland birds, such as the skylark, the grey partridge, the lapwing and the corn bunting, have vanished from huge stretches of countryside, as have even more wild flowers and insects. This is a direct result of the way we have produced our food in the last four decades. Thousands of miles of hedgerows, thousands of ponds, have disappeared from the landscape. The faecal filth of salmon farming has driven wild salmon from many of the sea lochs and rivers of Scotland. Natural soil fertility is dropping in many areas because ofcontinuous industrial fertiliser and pesticide use, while the growth of algae is increasing in lakes because of the fertiliser run-off.
C Put it all together and it looks like a battlefield, but consumers rarely make the connection at the dinner table. That is mainly because the costs of all this damage are what economists refer to as externalities: they are outside the main transaction, which is for example producing and selling a field of wheat, and are borne directly by neither producers nor consumers. To many, the costs may not even appear to be financial at all, but merely aesthetic - a terrible shame, but nothing to do with money. And anyway they, as consumers of food, certainly aren't paying for it, are they?
D But the costs to society can actually be quantified and, when added up, can amount to staggeringsums. A remarkable exercise in doing this has been carried out by one of the world's leading thinkers on the future of agriculture, Professor Jules Pretty, Director of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex. Professor Pretty and his colleagues calculated the externalities of British agriculturefor one particular year. They added up the costs of repairing the damage it caused, and came up with a total figure of ￡2,343m. This is equivalent to ￡208 for every hectare of arable land and permanentpasture, almost as much again as the total government and EU spend on British farming in that year. And according to Professor Pretty, it was a conservative estimate.
E The costs included: ￡120m for removal of pesticides; ￡16m for removal of nitrates; ￡55m for removal of phosphates and soil; ￡23m for the removal of the bug cryptosporidium from drinking water by water companies; ￡125m for damage to wildlife habitats, hedgerows and dry stone walls; ￡1,113m from emissions of gases likely to contribute to climate change; ￡106m from soil erosion and organic carbonlosses; ￡169m from food poisoning; and ￡607m from cattle disease. Professor Pretty draws a simple butmemorable conclusion from all this: our food bills are actually threefold. We are paying for oursupposedly cheaper food in three separate ways: once over the counter, secondly through our taxes, which provide the enormous subsidies propping up modern intensive farming, and thirdly to clean up the mess that modern farming leaves behind.
F So can the true cost of food be brought down? Breaking away from industrial agriculture as the solution to hunger may be very hard for some countries, but in Britain, where the immediate need to supply food is less urgent, and the costs and the damage of intensive farming have been clearly seen, it may be more feasible. The government needs to create sustainable, competitive and diverse farming and food sectors, which will contribute to a thriving and sustainable rural economy, and advance environmental, economic, health, and animal welfare goals.
G But if industrial agriculture is to be replaced, what is a viable alternative? Professor Pretty feels that organic farming would be too big a jump in thinking and in practices for many farmers. Furthermore, the price premium would put the produce out of reach of many poorer consumers. He is recommending the immediate introduction of a ‘Greener Food Standard', which would push the market towards moresustainable environmental practices than the current norm, while not requiring the full commitment to organic production. Such a standard would comprise agreed practices for different kinds of farming, covering agrochemical use, soil health, land management, water and energy use, food safety and animal health. It could go a long way, he says, to shifting consumers as well as farmers towards a moresustainable system of agriculture.
Question 22-26Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.
Professor Pretty concludes that our 22 are higher than most people realise, because we make three different types of payment. He feels it is realistic to suggest that Britain should reduce its reliance on 23.Although most farmers would be unable to adapt to 24 Professor Pretty wants the government to initiate change by establishing what he refers to as a 25. He feels this would help to change the attitudes of both 26 and 26
正确答案：22. food bills / costs23. intensive farming / modern intensive farming24. organic farming25. Greener Food Standard26. consumers ; farmers ;阅读解析：22.E 段倒数第五行冒号后面 our food bills are actually threefold... 与 summary 首句吻合，our 一词A-A 重现，且根据空格后面的系动词为are 判断出答案为复数名词。
23.该题较难。题目说的是英国应减少对什么的依赖，需要填一个名词。E 段第三、四行提到在英国集约耕作 (intensive farming) 的代价和损害已清楚显现，因此需要 reduce reliance(减少对其依赖)。
24.题目中要填写的内容是许多农民将不能适应什么，而G 段第二句提到 organic farming 对于许多农民来说，无论是理论上还是实践上都显得跳跃性太强。
25.该题较难，没有直接的重现，但是题目的表达方式为 what he refers to as a(他提到的叫作……)提示我们答案为一个单数名词，且应该对应特殊的标点符号(如：引号、破折号、括号、冒号等)或字符(如：首字母大写、斜体、加粗等)。而G 段第四行结尾、第五行开头处出现单引号及首字母大写的 Greener Food Standard。
26.顺着上一题的思路往下读，看到句末 shifting 一词与 change 对应，还看到 as well as 结构和 both...and... 结构对应，而此处正好是两个名词。
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