IT - practice test 7 - Bui Nhung

In the sets of material, both the reading and the listening focus on some concerns about transmitting from food crops to biofuel. The listening casts doubt on the reading at some points.

At the first point, the writer contends that using too much agriculture land for biofuel production could cause shortage of food. However, the speaker has a different opinion. She claims that as estimated the current demand of biofuel is 1.5 billion gallon. To produce such amount of biofuel, we just need only 5% of the US’s whole corn production in 2008. Moreover, it should be noted that according to the US corn association, in 2 next decades, US’s corn yield will increase 2 times as big as the current yield. So, the concern about lack of food caused by biofuel can rarely happen.

Secondly, according to the reading, increment of food price results from biofuel production. But, the lecturer refutes this argument. She states that there are other reasons for increasing price of food. In fact, price of biofuel will not be on the rise. The customer may save a large amount of money which can be used to buy other things including food. Moreover, having the same sum of money, different people have different options in consumption. It means that instead of making price of food rise, consumption biofuel could deprive food cost of increment.

Lastly, with regard to health concern, the reading claims that more crops for biofuel could result in less nutritional value for farmers. In contrast to this attitude, the listening oppose it that a lot of products of biofuel crop are not used by both human and animal feed. As a result, the meat production from livestock will drop. People will eat less meat than before that helps us avoid some serious diseases caused by eating too much fat.