Listening

1 Listen to the following interview with David Goulson from Radio 4 about bees and
the use of pesticides. Fill in the gaps

Dave G: Theres an accumulating body of evidence that is not just bees we

____________be concerned about. Something is going wrong with our countryside
and I am not trying to say its all to do with this particular group of____________, I
think its more to do with the overall way we are managing the countryside, but
everything is disappearing .
Interviewer: But of course, we do rely on pesticides for our crops. This year farmers
have been complaining that their crops have been destroyed by pests. Recently on
the Today Programme, Hannah Barnes talked to Essex farmer Stuart Galloway.
H. Barnes: In a good year or a normal year what should we be seeing now?
Farmer: We should be seeing a green ____________with rape about six inches tall.
H. B : And what ____________we see?
Farmer: A brown field with very little rape in it. The cabbage flea beetle that has
____________this crop, it makes potholes in the leaves, which basically destroy the
leaf, and then it ____________photosynthesize, and so it cant____________. Were
growing crops to feed the population, and to do it as efficiently and as effectively as
we can, but the industry as a whole is very concerned that the rape
____________will be decimated.
H.B : If the ban of neonicotinoids continues, what will you do going forward?
Farmer: Well, I dont know yet, but Ive got to seriously think about whether its viable
to grow rape.
Interviewer: Dave, what do you say to farmers? Are there any alternatives to
neonics?
Dave G: Well, firstly the tales of crop ____________have been someway
exaggerated. It has been a bad year for flea beetles, it has been a hot,
____________summer. It wouldve been a bad year for flea beetles regardless of
whether there was a moratorium on nionics or not. The home-grown
____________authority do a big survey to work out actually how bad is the damage

and they announce that actually 2.6% of the oil ____________rape crop was lost
which about half has been successfully re-sown and is fine. If the price of
____________our bees is losing 1.3% of our oil seed rape crop, then for me its nobrainer, but thats a price worth paying.
Interviewer: Its a matter of____________. We have tried to balance having enough
food to ____________the population and ____________nature. And are we, for
instance, prepared to ____________for food if thats what it comes to?
Dave G: I think actually thats a sort of a false____________. Its Were in no
danger of ____________food anytime soon, actually we waste extraordinary amount
of food in this world. I think its more a case of: do we want to manage the
environment in a ____________way so that we can leave a healthy environment for
our grandchildren? Or do we want to make a load of money right now? Our farming
system is currently depending on a blizzard of pesticides, every field is treated with
at least 20 different pesticides in a single growing____________. Farmers have
pretty much abandoned most of the ____________that they used to rely on to
manage pests like crop rotations, using ____________varieties, trying to encourage
natural____________, there are no natural enemies left on those farmers cause
theyve been wiped out ___________ all the pesticides.

techniques

resistant

premise

running out of

balance

pay more

cereals
cant

saving

season

enemies

sustainable
conserving
crop

pesticides

by
seed

feed

devastation
grow

field

can

dry
should

destroyed