A total of 10 questions are based on the following passage and supplementary material.This passage is adapted from Bryan Walsh, “Whole FoodBlues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable.” ©2012 by Time Inc.When it comes to energy, everyone loves 
efficiency. Cutting energy waste is one of those goals 
that both sides of the political divide can agree on, 
even if they sometimes diverge on how best to get 5 there. Energy efficiency allows us to get more out of 
our given resources, which is good for the economy 
and (mostly) good for the environment as well. In 
an increasingly hot and crowded world, the only 
sustainable way to live is to get more out of less. 10 Every environmentalist would agree. 
But change the conversation to food, and 
suddenly efficiency doesn’t look so good. 
Conventional industrial agriculture has become 
incredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis. 15 Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation, 
each American farmer feeds over 155 people 
worldwide. Conventional farming gets more and 
more crop per square foot of cultivated land— 
over 170 bushels of corn per acre in Iowa, for 20 example—which can mean less territory needs to 
be converted from wilderness to farmland. 
And since a third of the planet is already used for 
agriculture—destroying forests and other wild 
habitats along the way—anything that could help us 25 produce more food on less land would seem to be 
good for the environment. 
Of course, that’s not how most environmentalists 
regard their arugula [a leafy green]. They have 
embraced organic food as better for the planet—and 30 healthier and tastier, too—than the stuff produced by 
agricultural corporations. Environmentalists disdain 
the enormous amounts of energy needed and waste 
created by conventional farming, while organic 
practices—forgoing artificial fertilizers and chemical 35 pesticides—are considered far more sustainable. 
Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7 
billion—and people are making those purchases for 
their consciences as much as their taste buds. 
Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the math 40 and comes to a hard conclusion: organic farming 
yields 25% fewer crops on average than conventional 
agriculture. More land is therefore needed to 
produce fewer crops—and that means organic 
farming may not be as good for the planet as 45 we think. 
In the Nature analysis, scientists from McGill 
University in Montreal and the University of 
Minnesota performed an analysis of 66 studies 
comparing conventional and organic methods across 50 34 different crop species, from fruits to grains to 
legumes. They found that organic farming delivered 
a lower yield for every crop type, though the disparity 
varied widely. For rain-watered legume crops like 
beans or perennial crops like fruit trees, organic 55 trailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet for 
major cereal crops like corn or wheat, as well as most 
vegetables—all of which provide the bulk of the 
world’s calories—conventional agriculture 
outperformed organics by more than 25%. 60 The main difference is nitrogen, the chemical key 
to plant growth. Conventional agriculture makes use 
of 171 million metric tons of synthetic fertilizer each 
year, and all that nitrogen enables much faster plant 
growth than the slower release of nitrogen from the 65 compost or cover crops used in organic farming. 
When we talk about a Green Revolution, we really 
mean a nitrogen revolution—along with a lot 
of water. 
But not all the nitrogen used in conventional 70 fertilizer ends up in crops—much of it ends up 
running off the soil and into the oceans, creating vast 
polluted dead zones. We’re already putting more 
nitrogen into the soil than the planet can stand over 
the long term. And conventional agriculture also 75 depends heavily on chemical pesticides, which can 
have unintended side effects. 
What that means is that while conventional 
agriculture is more efficient—sometimes much more 
efficient—than organic farming, there are trade-offs 80 with each. So an ideal global agriculture system, in 
the views of the study’s authors, may borrow the best 
from both systems, as Jonathan Foley of the 
University of Minnesota explained: 
         The bottom line? Today’s organic farming 85     practices are probably best deployed in fruit and 
         vegetable farms, where growing nutrition (not 
         just bulk calories) is the primary goal. But for 
        delivering sheer calories, especially in our staple 
        crops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on,  90    conventional farms have the advantage right 
        now. 
        Looking forward, I think we will need to deploy 
        different kinds of practices (especially new, 
        mixed approaches that take the best of organic 95    and conventional farming systems) where they 
        are best suited—geographically, economically, 
        socially, etc <img alt="" class="alignnone wp-image-602096" height="329" src="https://data.ulearngo.com/assets/001d8ce8-1747-4641-80e2-d5d0e6d64879" width="400"/> <img alt="" class="alignnone wp-image-602097" height="356" src="https://data.ulearngo.com/assets/064f6b61-0d55-42d2-865d-4915c64de2c6" width="398"/>(5 of 10) Which statement best expresses a relationship between organic farming and conventional farming that is presented in the passage?