Section_ⅠWarming_Up_&_Reading_-_Pre­reading

　　1．A large number of people die of hunger in the world, especially in Africa, so agriculture plays an important role in our lives.Who do you think has made great contributions to growing rice that has a high output?

　　2．Why was Yuan Longping awarded the State Supreme Science and Technology Award? Please read the following passage to get the answer.

　　Yuan Longping, Father of Hybrid Rice, has a dream that he cultivates rice as plump (饱满的) as peanuts, and farmers can relax in the cool shadow of big rice plants.

　　Yuan won a 5­million­yuan State Supreme Science and Technology Award, known as the Nobel Prize in China, when he was 71 years old, for his outstanding achievements in breeding high­yield hybrid rice, which has greatly increased China's grain output. A minor planet was named after him in 1999.

　　Yuan came up with the idea of hybridizing rice for the first time in the 1960s. Since then, 50 percent of China's total rice cultivation fields have grown such rice, which added some 300 billion kilograms to the country's grain output. Yuan Longping in his 80s has devoted most of his life to growing rice.

　　He hopes to popularize the hybrid rice around the world to remove starvation from the earth. In 1980, Yuan went to the United States to share his knowledge about the cultivation technology of hybrid rice. He has done a lot to bring his research methods to other countries.

Warming Up 1．The title of this unit is "Working the land". Have you worked the land? Discuss in pairs and put the farming steps in order.