VOA标准英语2012--USAID Prioritizes to Boost Impact in Africa-英语课

时间：2019-01-13 作者：英语课 分类：VOA标准英语2012年(三月)

英语课

USAID Prioritizes to Boost Impact in Africa

Villagers near Senegal’s River Delta 1 plan a year-long rotation 2 of crops to supplement their diets and incomes. USAID provides technical guidance and has constructed wells for irrigation, helping 3 to turn fertile soil into flourishing gardens. Ngara Diatta tends an onion patch that will later produce tomatoes, eggplants, and cabbage.

"Before, goats and cows would trample 4 our garden and eat the vegetables," said the gardener. "It was upsetting to work so hard and have it all ruined. Now thanks to this project, we have fences to protect our crops and I can sleep peacefully. This project has changed our lives. We can sell these vegetables to help our families."
USAID also helped to construct an earthen dike 5 and concrete retention 6 basin to keep out saltwater and retain freshwater, allowing hundreds of hectares of land to be reclaimed 7 for farming.
"The groundwater used to be so deep that gardening was difficult. Thanks to the dike, we can find water easily. Now when the rice harvest is over, people plant vegetables. We can work year round," said community leader Abdoulaye Ndiaye.
The Senegal project is part of a global U.S. anti-hunger campaign called Feed the Future.
“Food aid costs eight-to-10 times more than investing in helping people produce and sustain their own futures 8 through agriculture," said USAID Administrator 9 Rajiv Shah. "We are starting to see real results in our Feed the Future partnership 10, with countries in that program experiencing a rate of agricultural productivity growth nearly eight times the global average.”
Foreign assistance accounts for one percent of U.S. government expenditures 11 - a share considered too high by some lawmakers at a time of massive U.S. indebtedness.
“You are going to have to convince me why it is necessary to borrow more money from communist China in order to give money to some other country or some other group of people,” said Congressman 12 Dana Rorhabacher.
Other legislators say fighting hunger, poverty and disease abroad is in America’s national interest.
“It is infinitely 13 cheaper to address these problems with economic and technical assistance now than to wait until fragile states collapse 14 or conflicts erupt in wide-scale violence and we have to resort to costly 15 emergency aid or even military action,” Congressman Howard Berman.
In rural Senegal, USAID’s impact is plain to see.
"We hear of rice shortages in Dakar but here, we do not have that problem," said Abdoulaye Ndiaye, Toubacouta Council president. "We are eating rice that we grow. We prepare it with oil from peanuts we farmed, and serve it with onions, eggplant, and cabbage. We thank the Americans for their continued support."

1 delta

n.（流的）角洲

He has been to the delta of the Nile.他曾去过尼罗河三角洲。
The Nile divides at its mouth and forms a delta.尼罗河在河口分岔，形成了一个三角洲。

2 rotation

n.旋转；循环，轮流

Crop rotation helps prevent soil erosion.农作物轮作有助于防止水土流失。
The workers in this workshop do day and night shifts in weekly rotation.这个车间的工人上白班和上夜班每周轮换一次。

3 helping

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

4 trample

vt.踩，践踏；无视，伤害，侵犯

Don't trample on the grass. 勿踏草地。
Don't trample on the flowers when you play in the garden. 在花园里玩耍时,不要踩坏花。

5 dike

n.堤，沟；v.开沟排水

They dug a dike along walls of the school.他们沿校墙挖沟。
Fortunately,the flood did not break the dike.还好，这场大水没有把堤坝冲坏。

6 retention

n.保留，保持，保持力，记忆力

They advocate the retention of our nuclear power plants.他们主张保留我们的核电厂。
His retention of energy at this hour is really surprising.人们惊叹他在这个时候还能保持如此旺盛的精力。

7 reclaimed

adj.再生的；翻造的；收复的；回收的v.开拓( reclaim的过去式和过去分词 )；要求收回；从废料中回收（有用的材料）；挽救