53. Britain Accelerates toward Cleaner Future—with Wheat.
53、依托小麦—英国加速迈向绿色未来.
1. Wheat never used to get Charlie Goldsack excited. He's got fields of the stuff down on his farm, but as a cash crop there was one big problem: it didn't generate much cash. Rock bottom prices saw to that.
1、小麦从未让查利·戈德萨克兴奋过。虽然他的农场大片大片地种着这东西，但作为一种商品作物，它的一大缺陷就是创收有限。最低价在那儿决定着呢。
2. But now, the farmer hopes his wheat might literally become the driving force of his 1,400-acre Friar Maine farm in southern England.
2、但现在，这位农场主希望小麦能够给他在南英格兰的1400英亩的费赖尔缅因农场带来活力。
3. Instead of heading to the bakery, Goldsack's harvest will now go to a nearby plant for conversion into bioethanol—part of accelerating British efforts to introduce cleaner car fuel.
3、今后，戈德萨克所收获的小麦将不再送往面包房，而是供应给附近一家工厂生产生物酒精——这是英国加速引进清洁汽车燃料行动的一部分。
4. "For a lot of farms, it was barely economic to grow wheat any more," he says. "This is just what we need—a new market. Hopefully it can soak up all the surplus and raise prices."
4、“对许多农场来说，再种小麦几乎已经无利可图了，”他说，“这正是我们所需要的——一个新市场。但愿它能消化掉所有过剩的小麦，从而抬高小麦的价格。”
5. The simple arithmetic looks compelling. Goldsack's roughly 250 acres could yield enough wheat to produce a million miles' of car fuel.
5、这个简单的算法看上去挺有说服力：戈德萨克的大约250英亩小麦，就足以生产供一辆汽车行驶100万英里的燃油。
6. Extrapolate that across all of Britain's farmland and you get enough bioethanol to account for 5 percent of all fuel used annually by British motorists—a target the government wants hit by 2010. In a pleasing symmetry, the amount of wheat required would be around 3 million tons, roughly equal to the excess produced each year that is unwanted by the domestic market.
6、以此推算，整个英国的农场足够供应每年全国5%的机动车燃料消耗量。英国政府希望到2010年达到这一目标。随之而来的好处是，为此所需的小麦数量将在300万吨左右，大致相当于国内市场每年的剩余量。
7. "If this soaks up that surplus then it could add eight or nine pounds to the price of wheat," enthuses Goldsack, estimating that this would be worth about J 10,000 ($17,445) a year to his investment-starved farm.
7、“如果该计划能够消化掉所有剩余小麦，小麦的价格就会(每吨)上涨8、9英镑，”戈德萨克兴奋地说，并且预计这会给他急需投资的农场带来每年1万英镑(1.7440万美元)的收益。
8. While President Bush last week emphasized the need for cleaner cars for reasons of energy security, Britain's motivations are slightly different. As a signatory to the Kyoto pact on climate change, Britain must reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2010. With motoring accounting for almost one-third of emissions, and greener fuels like bioethanol estimated to reduce greenhouse gas output by around two-thirds, the logic appears indisputable.
Will oil companies stand in the way?
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