Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 1...
Đề bài
Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 17 to 24.
Site-specific crop management (SSM) acknowledges the natural, inherent variability threaded through every field. Historically, mechanized routines treated land as if it were homogeneous, applying inputs to an “average” that seldom exists. Such blanket approaches generated excesses and deficits alike – herbicides, pesticides, irrigation, and fertilizers were often misallocated. The consequences were predictable: runoff and leaching into surface and groundwater systems, alongside squandered budgets and diminished ecological integrity. SSM, by contrast, treats each patch as a distinct micro-environment whose needs must be measured before they are met.
Modern SSM marries precise global positioning with location-specific measurements. Agronomists compile in-field observations (soil chemistry, moisture, or pest incidence) and fuse them with remotely sensed signals from aircraft and satellites, thereby quantifying spatial heterogeneity. These layered datasets are rendered as management-zone maps. Operations inside the field then adjust inputs according to those zones, so that application rates shift as equipment crosses invisible boundaries. Instead of crude uniformity, decision-making is tethered to georeferenced evidence, and interventions are paced by where the machine actually stands.
A newer wave of precision technologies can sense microsite conditions in real time and modify inputs “on the go.” These systems require no a priori maps because sensing and treatment are executed simultaneously, allowing variable-rate nitrogen to track the plant’s immediate status. By embedding sensors and controllers on implements, the machine turns perception into actuation without pausing for offline analysis. These devices displace guesswork with feedback, so prescriptions co-evolve with the crop’s signals rather than being locked to yesterday’s cartography.
Paradoxically, SSM revives a sensibility once common in small-scale, non-mechanized agriculture, when farmers cultivated with intimate knowledge of every furrow. Mechanization later slashed labor – the dominant cost – and scaled production, even while wasting cheaper inputs. As fertilizer and chemical prices have risen, and as environmental externalities are finally tallied, producers are gravitating toward variable-rate systems to curtail expenses and mitigate harm. The ethic is pragmatic: treat heterogeneity as first principle, not nuisance, and let technology re-enable attentiveness at industrial scale.
(Adapted from https://www.nifa.usda.gov/grants/programs/precision-geospatial-sensor-technologies-programs/precision-agriculture-crop-production)
Question 17. The word excesses in paragraph 1 is OPPOSITE in meaning to ______.
A. surpluses B. overflows C. deficits D. redundancies