托福阅读真题练习：美国农业的文本+真题+答案

2017年11月08日14:58 来源：小站整理: 参与（0）阅读（187234）

摘要：托福阅读真题哪里有?大家平时备考托福阅读考试的时候都用的是哪些真题呢?除了官方真题Official的托福阅读真题以外，大家进行托福阅读的练习大多数可能都是根据老托资料或者是课外资料来练习了。那么到哪里去找到托福阅读真题来进行练习呢?

托福阅读如何进行备考?除了大量的托福词汇储备以外，大家可能最需要的就是托福阅读真题的练习。那么除了官方真题Official你还有哪些托福阅读真题进行练习呢?今天小编就为大家整理了托福阅读真题100篇：美国农业的文本、题目以及答案，希望可以帮助到大家。

托福阅读100篇真题练习汇总：http://toefl.zhan.com/tfziliao63739.html

托福阅读文本：

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the production of food and feed crops in the United States rose at an extraordinarily rapid rate. Corn production increased by four and a half times, hay by five times, oats and wheat by seven times. The most crucial factor behind this phenomenal upsurge in productivity was the widespread adoption of labor-saving machinery by northern farmers. By 1850 horse-drawn reaping machines that cut grain were being introduced into the major grain-growing regions of the country. Horse-powered threshing machines to separate the seeds from the plants were already in general use. However, it was the onset of the Civil War in 1861 that provided the great stimulus for the mechanization of northern agriculture.

With much of the labor force inducted into the army and with grain prices on the rise, northern farmers rushed to avail themselves of the new labor-saving equipment. In 1860 there were approximately 80,000 reapers in the country; five years later there were 350,000.

After the close of the war in 1865, machinery became ever more important in northern agriculture, and improved equipment was continually introduced. By 1880 a self-binding reaper had been perfected that not only cut the grain, but also gathered the stalks and bound them with twine. Threshing machines were also being improved and enlarged, and after 1870 they were increasingly powered by steam engines rather than by horses. Since steam-powered threshing machines were costly items — running from $ 1,000 to $4,000 — they were usually owned by custom thresher owners who then worked their way from farm to farm during the harvest season. "Combines" were also coming into use on the great wheat ranches in California and the Pacific Northwest. These ponderous machines — sometimes pulled by as many as 40 horses — reaped the grain, threshed it, and bagged it, all in one simultaneous operation.

The adoption of labor-saving machinery had a profound effect upon the sale of agricultural operations in the northern states — allowing farmers to increase vastly their crop acreage. By the end of century, a farmer employing the new machinery could plant and harvest two and half times as much corn as a farmer had using hand methods 50 years before.

托福阅读题目：

1. What aspect of farming in the United States in the nineteenth century does the passage mainly discuss?

(A) How labor-saving machinery increased crop Production

(B) Why southern farms were not as successful as Successful as northern farms

(D) The increase in the number of people farming

2. The word "crucial" in line 4 is closest in meaning to

(A) obvious

(B) unbelievable

(D) desirable

3. The phrase "avail themselves" in line 11 is closest in meaning to

(A) take care

(B) make use