TEXT 10 AGRICULTURE IN THE USA
Task 1. Read the text “Agriculture in the USA” carefully. Find the Russian equivalents for the following expressions:
▲annual GDP
▲to meet domestic needs
▲scientific farming practices
▲total annual farm receipts
▲a major crop
▲predominant cash crop
Farming accounts for less than 2 percent of annual GDP and employs fewer than 3 percent of U.S. workers. Yet the nation leads the world in many aspects of agricultural production. Farmers not only produce enough to meet domestic needs, they also produce enough to enable the United States to export more farm products per year than any other nation in the world. Excluding inflation, the increase in the farm output is 2 percent annually.
The small subsistence farm run by a farmer primarily to meet personal needs has virtually disappeared from the American scene. Less than 1 percent of the total farm output by value is consumed by households on the farms where it is produced. Most agricultural products are grown on large commercial farms for shipment to urban and industrial markets.
Increased mechanization and widespread use of scientific farming practices have led to a decrease in the number of farms and farmers and an increase in the size of farms.
Beef cattle rank as the most valuable product of the nation's farms, accounting for almost one-fourth of total annual farm receipts. Many of the cattle are raised on large ranches in southwestern states. Dairy products represent about 12 percent of the yearly value of farm marketing and are the second most valuable item coming from American farms. Hogs and broiler chickens are other major livestock raised on U.S. farms. The states of Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina account for more than half of U.S. broiler chicken output. Other major livestock and livestock products include chicken eggs, turkeys, and sheep and lambs.
Leading agricultural crops are corn, vegetables, soybeans, fruits and nuts, wheat, cotton, and tobacco. Soybeans are grown primarily in the Midwest; the cultivation of soybeans expanded rapidly into the lower Mississippi Valley and other parts of the South.
Corn is a major crop in many parts of the United States, but most is produced in the Midwest, where it is the main feed for the cattle and hogs raised there. Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Indiana together produce more than half of the annual U.S. corn crop.
Wheat is another important U.S. crop. Kansas usually leads all states in yearly wheat production. For more than a century and a half, cotton was the predominant cash crop in the South. Today, however, it is no longer important in some of the traditional cotton-growing areas east of the Mississippi River. Cotton growing is now concentrated in relatively flat areas amenable to large-scale mechanization, such as the lower Mississippi Valley, the plains of Texas, and the valleys of California and Arizona. Tobacco remains an important cash crop. The leading tobacco-producing states are North Carolina, which accounts for more than one-third of the national output, and Kentucky, which annually produces between one-fourth and one-third.
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Other leading crops include peanuts, peaches, tomatoes, and apples. More than three-fifths of the oranges and about half the tomatoes are produced in Florida; roughly one-fourth of the potatoes are grown in Idaho and one-sixth in Washington; some 90 percent of the grapes are raised in California; and about half of the commercial apples come from orchards in Washington. Additional major crops grown on U.S. farms are sugarcane, rice, sorghum grain, dry beans, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, cantaloupes, and watermelon. Other valuable fruit crops include cherries, pears, plums and prunes, and strawberries. Major nut crops include almonds, pecans, and walnuts.
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