Class Supplement (TOEFL Essay, A new center for business research or agricultural research ? -rewritten-)

Writing Topic: Imagine that a university is planning to build a new research center in your country, but it has not been decided whether to create a center of business research or agricultural (farming) research. Which of the two sorts of research centers would you prefer to be built in your country?

Ideas and Expressions:

Business
1. Japan has been one of the biggest economies in the world for a long time, but this has been due to our strong competitiveness in products, not in sales and marketing. To stay competitive, we need to learn more about business, for example, market research.

2. Japan is an export-driven economy and our main exports are luxury items such as cars and electronics, which bring great profits in good times but become redundant in recession. Research on specific demands in each area on this planet will help diversify exports and stabilize export earnings.

3. With enough wealth and technology to help reduce the damage of global warming and environmental destruction, developed countries are expected to shift to a sustainable economy. To restructure our economy, we need to do more research on related areas such as evaluation of eco-friendly technology businesses.

4. The low food self-sufficiency (40%) is not necessarily dangerous in this globalized economy. Also, Japan is an exporter of industrial products and importer of agricultural products and adding just another agricultural research center cannot change this economic structure. Moreover, the level of our agricultural research is very high. People come to learn about our agriculture from all over the world and we send experts to countries suffering from food shortage to help develop their farming.

Agriculture
1. The age-old problems of Japanese agriculture are very little farmland (90% of the land is forest), decreasing numbers of farmers and farmhouses, aging, and weakening functions of farming societies caused by industrialization especially after WWII.

2. In addition, traditional sustainable agriculture has been destroyed by the introduction of factory style farming, or single-crop farming, which, for example, requires importing more than thousand ton of feed grains and contaminates rivers with large amounts of cattle feces. Now that restrictions on agribusiness have been lifted, this trend might be accelerated.

3. Our rice self-sufficiency is 100% while most of the crops for meat production are imported. Since wheat and corn will be in much greater demand for bio-fuel and food crises, research on more sustainable and self-sufficient protein-intake is necessary.

4. Because small farmers cannot make a living, the number of farmhouses is decreasing, and now 30% of all farmhouses produce only for their use, not for sale. Even though it is almost impossible to stop this trend, there is a concern about it. Other than the fear of food shortage in case of emergency, there is a sentiment that totally losing Japanese style farming might lead to losing our roots, things related to traditional agricultural society such as our thought patters and customs.

5. Although the problem of low self-sufficiency is the problem of business (deflation－people giving up farming because prices of crops keep coming down) and politics (trimming rice production to reduce old rice stock), approaches to improve the situation by those who are involved in farming should be effective and innovative.

6. Plant factories, invented and developed in Japan, can produce edible plants without soil all through the year. It can help solve problems of environmental destruction－no damage to the soil by fertilizers―and food shortage. Also, we can export not only the produce but also the factory and software, which can help vitalize our economy.

7. One alternative energy resource receiving particular attention is biomass-energy, which is a subject of agricultural study.

8. We have not eliminated hunger-related deaths in poor countries yet, and population increase, global warming, and environmental destruction could cause food shortage in the near future. Developed countries are required to make more contribution to research on food security such as irrigation, plants which are more resistant to climate change, and genetically modified crops.