using land wisely 原文加翻译

1、Using Land WiselyA very important world problem-in fact, I am inclined to say it is the most important of all the great world problems which face us at the present time-is the rapidly increasing pressure of population on land and on land resources. 一个十分重要的世界性难题（事实 上我更倾向于说它是我们目前所面临的所有世界性大难题中 最重要的）是对于

2、土地和土地资源来说快速增长的人口压力。It is not so much the actual population of the world but its rate of increase which is important. It works out to be about 1.6per cent per annum net increase.重要的是人口的增长率而不是实际世 界人口数量。世界人口正大约以每年1.6%的净速率在增长。In terms of numbers this means something like forty to fifty-five million addi

3、tional people every year-Canada has a population of twenty million-rather less than six months, climb in world population. 从 数字上看来，这意味着，甚至在少于六个月的时间里，世界人 口中就会增加大约40,000, 000到55, 000,000个人。TakeAustralia. There are ten million people in Australia. So, it takes the world less than three months to add to

4、 itself a population which peoples that vast country.以澳大利亚为例，那儿有一千万人口，所以 只需要花费不到三个月的时间增长的世界人口数就能达到这 个硕大的国家的人口水平。Let us take our own crowded country-England and Wales: forty-five to fifty million people-just about a Years supply. By this time tomorrow, and every day, there will be added to the earth

5、about 120,000 extra people - just about the population of the city of York.再以人口密度大的国家英格兰 和威尔士为例，45,000, 000到50, 000, 000的人口相当于一年 的世界人口增长量。直至今日，每天地球上都会多出12万人 口，这相当于约克市的人口数量。I am not talking about birth rate. This is net increase. To give you some idea of birth rate, look at the second hand of your wa

6、tch. Every second three babies are born somewhere in the world. Another baby! Another baby! Another baby! You cannot speak quickly enough to keep pace with the birth rate.我在讨论的不是出生率，而是净增长。为了让你大概了解出生率，请看着手表的秒针，每一秒都有三 个婴儿在世界的某个地方出生。一个！又一个！再一个！你说 的再快也赶不上出生率。This enormous increase of population will cre

7、ate immense problems.By A.D- 2000, unless something desperate happens, there will be as manyas 7,000,000,000 people on the problem which you are going to 增长会带来巨大的问题。到 生，地球上的人口将会达到 年会遇到的问题。surface of this earth! So this is asee in your lifetime.巨大的人口2000年，除非有令人绝望的事发70亿之多。所以这是在你有生之Why is this enormous

8、 increase in population taking place? It is really due to the spread of the knowledge and the practice of what is的概念。coming to be called Death Control. You have heard of Birth Control? Death Control is something rather different.为什么人口的大量增 长会发生呢？这是因为知识的传播和将会被成为“死亡控制” 的举措。你听说过“计划生育”吧？ “死亡控制”是完全不同Death

9、 Control recognizes the work of doctors and the nursesand the hospitals and the death services in keeping alive people who, a few years ago, would have died of some of the incredibly serious killing disease and dirt, Medical examinations at school catch diseases.“死亡控制”是医生护士、医院和殡葬服务机构的工作，这个工作是让几年前就可能

10、因为难以治愈的疾病和学校体 检中发现的疾病而死亡的人们舌下来。If you are seriously ill there is an ambulance to take you to a modern hospital. Medical care helps to keep people alive longer. We used to think seventy was a good age; now eighty, ninety, it may be, are coming to be recognized as a normal age for human beings. People

11、 are living longer because of this Death Control, and fewer children are dying, so the population of the world is shooting up.如果你病入膏肓了，救护车会把你送进现 代化医院。医疗护理会帮助人们活得更久。我们过去常认为70 岁已是高龄。现在，80或90岁将有可能被认为是人类的正常 岁数。因为“死亡控制”，人们活得更久，更少的孩子会死亡， 所以世界人口数量直线上升。Imagine the position if you and I and everyone else liv

12、ing on earth shared the surface between us. How much should we have each? It would be just over twelve acres-the sort of size of a small holding- 想象 着如果我们每个生活在地球上的人要分配地表面积。我们每人 应该拥有多少呢？应该只有12英亩多的一小块地。But not all that is useful land which is going to produce food. We can cut out one-fifth of it, for

13、example, as being too cold. That is land which is covered with ice and snow-Antarctica and Greenland and the great frozen areas of northern Canada. 但是不是所有都是可以用来生产 食物的有用的地。比如我们可以减去其中五十分之一的过于寒 冷的土地，例如南极和格陵兰岛和加拿大北部的大冰冻地区的 土地，那些土地被冰雪覆盖。Then we can cut out another fifth as being too dry-the great deserts

14、 of the world like the Sahara and the heart of Australia and other areas where there is no known water supply to feed crops and so to produce food. 然后我们可以再减去其中五 十分之一的过于干旱的土地一撒哈拉等地球上的大沙漠、澳大 利亚中部和其他没有可以浇灌庄稼和生产食物的水源的地方。Then we can cut out another fifth as being too mountainous or with too great an elev

15、ation above sea level. Then we can cut out another tenth as land which has insufficient soil, probably just rock at the surface. 我们还可以再减去其中五十分之一的过于多山或海拔过高的 土地，再减去另外十分之一的贫瘠的、大部分地表是岩石的土 地。Now, out of the twelve acres only about four are left as suitable for producing food. But not all that is used. It

16、 includes land with enough rainfall or water, and enough heat which, at present, we are not using, such as, for example, the great Amazon forests and Congo forest and the grasslands of Africa.现在，12 英亩的土地中只剩 下了 4英亩是适合于生产食物的。但是不是所有这些土地都利 用了。它还包括一些地方，那里有足够水或降雨量和热量，但 如今我们还没有使用，例如亚马逊大森林、刚果森林和非洲草 原。How mu

17、ch are we actually using? Only a little over one acre is what is required to support one human being on an average at the present time.我们实际上用了多少土地呢？现今平均只有一英亩多的 土地可以用来养活一个人类。Now we come to the next point, and that is, the haves and the have-nots amongst the countries of the world. The standard share

18、per person for the world is a little over twelve acres perhead; potentially usable, about four acres; and actually used about 1.1 acre. 现在我 们来看下一点，就是国家间的贫富差距。起初世界每个人分到 的土地标准是12英亩多；潜在可用的是4英亩；实际上已经 被用的是1.1英亩。We are very often told in Britain to take the United States as an example of what is done or w

19、hat might be done. Every little American is born into this world with a heritage of the home country, the continental United States, of just about the world average about twelve acres.在英国，我们经常要以美国为例，关于在 做什么和将要做什么。每一个美国人生来就有国家的遗产（美 国大陆）和世界平均的12英亩的土地。We can estimate that probably some six acres of the

20、 total of twelve of the American homeland is cultivable in the sense I have just given you. But the amount actually used -what the Americans call Improved land in crops and pasture on farms-is three and a half acres. 用我告诉你的方法来 估计，彳艮可能12英亩的美国的土地中有6英亩是可以耕种的。 但是实际使用的亩数是3.5英亩，美国人称之为适合于庄稼和 农场畜牧的“优质土地”。So

21、 the Americans have over three times the world average of land on which to produce food for themselves. On that land they produce more food than they actually require, so they have a surplus for export.所以把，美国人拥有世界平均水平的 三倍的土地用于为自己生产食物。在那土地上，他们生产多过 于实际需求的食物，所以他们有剩余的食物用于出口。Now suppose we take the Unite

22、d States great neighbour to the north, Canada. Every Canadian has 140 acres to roam around in. A lot of it is away in the frozen north, but there is still an enormous area of land in Canada waiting to be settled and developed. The official figure is twenty-two acres. The Canadians use at the moment

23、four acres, and they too have a large food surplus available for export. 现在我们 探讨一下美国北部的邻国，加拿大。每个加拿大人有140英亩 的土地可以用来闲逛。许多土地远在寒冷的北方，但是加拿大 仍然有巨大面积的土地在等待着被居住和开发。官方数据是22英亩。加拿大人现在使用了 4英亩，他们也有许多多余的食物 可以用于出口。Now turn to our own country-including land of all sorts, there is just over one acre per head in the

24、United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That is why we have to be so very careful with it. How much do we actually use? Just over half an acre to produce food that is as farm land. 现在反过来说我们国家，包括所有种类的 土地，英联邦和北爱尔兰的人平均只有1英亩多的土地。这就 是我们对土地如此关心的原因。我们实际使用多少土地呢？只 有半英亩多的土地作为农田用于种植粮食。 The story

25、is much the same if you separate off Northern Ireland and Scotland and just take England and Wales. In this very crowded country, we have only 0.8 acres per head of land of all sorts to do everything with which we need. That is why we have to think so very carefully of this problem. 如果你 撇开北爱尔兰和苏格兰不说

26、，只看英格兰和威尔士也是一样 的。在这个十分拥挤的国家，包含所有种类的土地，我们人均 只有0.8英亩的土地来做我们需要做的所有的事。这就是我们 对这个问题如此关心的原因。India, with 25 acres per head, has considerably more land than we have in this country. Not all of it is usable for food production. But there is land which could be reclaimed by modern methods, that is being tackle

27、d at the present time. 印度每人有25英亩的土地，比我国 的人拥有的要多得多。虽然不是所有的土地都能用于食物生 产，但是有些土地可以用现在已经掌握的现代化方法开垦。The crucial figure is the actual area in agricultural use-threequarters an acre! The yields from this land are low, methods of production are primitive, and that is why the Indians are so very near the starv

28、ation level for almost every year of their lives. But they are not as badly off where land is concerned as Japan.最重要的数据是实际的农用 土地的利用率是四分之三。这片土地的出产量低，生产方式原 始，这就是为什么几乎每年印度人的生活都接近于饥饿水平。 但是他们的土地还没有日本的糟糕。The Japanese figures are the same as our own country in overall land-1.1 acres per person-but it is a

29、very mountainous country with volcanoes, and so much less is cultivable. Less than a fifth of an acre-0.17 of an acre-is under cultivation. You see at once the tremendous land problem which there is in Japan.包含所有的土地， 日本的数据和我国一样，每个人1.1英亩。但是日本是个多山 的、多火山的国家，所以可以耕种的土地就更少了。你立刻就 能看到日本巨大的土地问题了。There is a g

30、reat variation, of course, in the intensity with which land is used. In the United States they are extravagant in the use of land and take, perhaps, twenty times as much to feed one person as in Japan. You may talk about the Japanese agriculture being twenty times as efficient as the American, but t

31、hat raises a lot of questions 当 然，土地的使用强度上会有很大的变动。在美国，他们挥霍土 地，用日本的二十倍的土地来养活一个人。你可能会说日本的 农业比美国高效二十倍，但是那引起了许多问题。The intensive cultivation characteristic of Japan uses every little bit of land and only the barren hillsides are not required. Much of the agriculture is based on rice. The farm workers pla

32、nt by hand every individual rice plant, and this kind of intensive cultivation enables the Japanese to support seven persons per acre. 日本的集约栽培 使用每一寸土地，只有贫瘠的山丘不被使用。大部分的农业种 植大米。农民亲手种植每一棵水稻。这种集约栽培使得日本人 能用1英亩的土地养活七个人。By contrast, think of the ranch lands in North and South America, with animals ranging

33、over immense tracts of land. A diet of beef and of milk is extravagant of land; in other words, it takes a lot of land for the number of calories produced-in this sense it is less efficient than the Japanese rice-growing agriculture. But not everyone likes eating rice.相比之下，想到北美和南美的大牧场上，动物驰骋 在大片的土地上。

34、一顿牛肉和牛奶是对土地的浪费。换句话说， 生产一定量的卡路里需要使用许多土地，从这个意义上讲，这 比日本的水稻种植农业要低效的多。但是不是每个人都喜欢吃 大米的。Where the sea is concerned, we are scarcely, at the present time, out of the Old Stone Age. In the Stone Age the people simply went out,killed wild animals-if they were lucky-and had a good meal； if they were unlucky they just went hungry. At the present day we do almostthe same thing in the sea, hunting wild fish from boats. In the future, perhaps, we shall cultivate the sea; we shall grow small fish and fishspawn in tanks