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SEOUL - For North Korean refugees, the journey to freedom can be physically grueling. Many swim across a river into China and then travel undercover, avoiding authorities before they reach Southeast Asia and head to South Korea. Imagine making the trip with only one foot and one hand.

Every week, Ji Seong-ho holds a silent demonstration against North Korea. He is one of the 23,000 defectors in South Korea who have fled the repressive Pyongyang government.

Ji's journey south was more challenging than most. During the famine of the mid-1990s, when Ji was 14, he suffered a terrible accident.

"I was helping my parents make a living by stealing coal off trains and selling it in the market. I got dizzy once and I ended up falling off a moving train. It ran me over," Ji explains.

He lost his left hand and foot.
Eventually, Ji crossed into China to find food. But on the way back, he was caught by North Korean guards.

"The police severely beat me for a week, maybe more than other escapees. They told me that because I am disabled I brought shame to North Korea and that someone with only one leg should stay home," Ji recalls. "That is when I lost my trust in the North Korean government."

In 2006, Ji escaped again and made it to South Korea, where he was given a prosthetic foot and hand.

Many refugees arrive with traumatic injuries that leave them emotionally impaired. Kion Won-hyoung is a psychologist at a government resettlement facility for defectors.

"Because of their experience, many refugees are afraid of even the security guards at the facility," explains Kion. "They have nightmares about being tortured in North Korea, or being chased by animals."

Ji Seong-ho is now a law student. He says he had never imagined how much easier life is for the disabled in South Korea.

"I don’t feel any discrimination toward disabled people in South Korea," Ji says."I think that’s because of its democracy and good education. I really feel it’s like heaven here."

Ji says he is waiting for the Koreas to be unified. He says that's when he will finally be able to step back onto his homeland.

VOA慢速
【The Limits to Organic Farming in Feeding the World】有機耕種食品遭限制

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TEXT:This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.Organic farming avoids the use of chemical pesticides and manmade fertilizers. Supporters say organic farming is better for the environment than conventional methods. But studies have shown that organic farming generally produces less food per hectare.

That lower yield means feeding the world organically would require more land. But good farmland is limited. And scientists say deforestation from the clearing of land for agriculture is already a problem for climate change.

In a new study, researchers wanted to measure the difference between conventional and organic yields. So they combined the results of sixty-six earlier studies. They found that some organic farms can yield almost as much as conventional farms. But most cannot.

Verena Seufert at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, was the lead author of the study in the journal Nature.

VERENA SEUFERT: "Conventional yields are typically higher than organic yields. But with certain management practices, certain environmental conditions, and certain crop species, this yield difference can be quite small."

On average, organic farms produced twenty-five percent less compared to conventional farms. But yields of organic fruits and other perennial crops nearly equaled the yields from conventional ones. So did the yields of legumes such as soybeans. Legumes produce some of their own nitrogen fertilizer.

However, organic vegetables and cereal crops like maize and wheat had a lot lower yields compared to conventionally grown crops.

Ms. Seufert says the soil on organic farms holds water better, and that can reduce the yield difference. Also, organic farmers can improve their yields by making sure their crops get enough fertilizer. But increasing the nitrogen is harder to do organically, using just animal waste and crop rotations.

Organic farmers rotate food crops with plants that fertilize the soil. But while these "cover," or fertilizer, crops are growing, food crops have to be grown on other land. And if farmers use manure , they have to feed the animals that produce it, and that requires grazing land or crop land.

The United Nations predicts that world demand for food will grow seventy percent by the middle of the century. John Reganold is a soil scientist at Washington State University. He says no one should dismiss organic agriculture as part of the solution.

JOHN REGANOLD: "I think when people see these studies, their first reaction is, 'Well, my goodness, organic farming can't feed the world.' Guess what? Conventional farming cannot sustainably feed the world."

Mr. Reganold -- who was not part of the study -- says farming is increasingly a combination of organic and conventional methods.

JOHN REGANOLD: "And it's really going to be a blend of these, I think, more diverse systems that are going to save us."

參考譯文:這里是美國之音慢速英語農業報道。
有機農業避免使用化學殺蟲劑和人造肥料，支持者說，與傳統方法相比，有機農業對環境更有好處。但研究表明，有機農業每公頃的產量通常要少些。
低產量意味著，用有機農業為全世界提供糧食的話，需要更多耕地。但良田是有限的。科學家說，砍伐森林以開墾農田已經是造成氣候變化的一個問題。
在一份新研究中，研究者希望能測量出傳統農業與有機農業產量的差異。他們結合了早期66份研究結果，發現有的有機農場的產量幾乎和傳統農場一樣。但大多數不能。
Verena Seufert就職于加拿大麥基爾大學，他是《科學》雜志上這份研究的主要作者。
VERENA SEUFERT: “傳統農業的產量通常高于有機農業，但在特定管理實踐、一定環境條件和一定作物品種的條件下，產量的差異會很小。”
一般說來，有機農場的產量比傳統農業要少25%，但有機水果和其他多年生作物的產量幾乎與傳統農業一樣。黃豆一類的豆類作物也是如此，豆類能生產自己所需的一些氮肥。
然而，有機蔬菜和諸如玉米和小麥的谷類作物的產量比傳統種植的作物要少得多。
SEUFERT說，有機土壤能更好地保持水分，從而減少產量差異。有機農民可以給作物施足量的肥料以提高產量，但僅僅使用動物糞便和作物輪作這種方式增加氮量很難。
有機農民將糧食作物與能肥田的作物輪作，但種植這些肥料作物時，就只能在其它地里種植糧食作物。如果農民使用農家肥，就必須喂養產生農家肥的動物。這些就需要牧場和耕地。
聯合國預測，到本世紀中葉，全世界糧食需求量將增加70%。John Reganold是華盛頓州立大學一名土壤科學家，他說，我們不該忽略有機農業作為一種解決辦法。
John Reganold：“我想，人們看到這些研究時，第一個反應就是‘哦，天啊，有機農業無法養活全世界’你猜怎么著？傳統農業無法可持續性地養活全世界。”
Reganold并非該研究的參與者，他說，農業正日益成為有機和常規方式的結合體。
JOHN REGANOLD: “它確實會融合這些。我認為更多樣化的體系會拯救我們。”
注：本VOA譯文由可可英語Sunny提供。