IELTS Reading: food and agriculture passages
Farming, crops, food production and the history of what we eat and drink.
27 passages mainly about food and agriculture · 33 more that touch on it · from 60 full tests
Passages mainly about food and agriculture
Each passage opens as a timed 20-minute practice with its 13–14 questions. Submit to see your band estimate and the sentence that proves every answer.
- From Bean to Bar
- Farming Upwards
- The Story of Tea
- The Journey of Coffee
- Milk, Microbes and Time: How Cheese Is Made
- The Sweet Commodity
- The Living Staircases of the Cordillera
- The Rise of Bread
- The Chilli's Global Conquest
- The Potato's Long Journey
- Meat from a Bioreactor
- Reading the Field
- Three Fields and a Fallow
- What Hunter-Gatherers Ate
- How Wheat Became a Crop
- The Brewers of Ancient Mesopotamia
- The Wine of the Ancient Mediterranean
- Feeding the Legions
- What Did Medieval People Eat?
- How Sourdough Fermentation Works
- The Story of the Avocado
- The Story of Saffron
- The Story of Vanilla
- The Slow Arrival of the Tomato
- Should Urban Farms Receive Public Money?
- Should Meat Grown in Laboratories Replace Livestock Farming?
- Should Insects Be Farmed for Food?
Other passages that cover food and agriculture
These passages have a different main subject but deal with food and agriculture along the way.
33 passages
- Salt: A Humble Mineral
- The Disappearing Pollinators
- Keeping Things Cold
- Rethinking Food Waste
- Sealed in Tin
- Rewilding the Farm
- The Toad That Conquered a Continent
- The Dust Bowl: A Lesson Written in Soil
- Saving Seeds for an Uncertain Future
- The Fifth Taste: Umami
- The Pineapple's Passage to Europe
- The Soils That Volcanoes Build
- Drones on the Farm
- Editing the Harvest
- Under Pressure: The Long History of the Pressure Cooker
- Harvesting Sunlight Above the Crops
- The Great Hunger in Ireland
- The Business of Salvation
- Oil for the Capital: Rome's Olive Trade
- Turning the Soil: the heavy plough and the horse collar
- The Fleece and the Crown
- Should the History of Food Be Taught in Schools?
- Should Every School Teach Children to Cook?
- Should Energy Drinks Be Banned for Children?
- The Case for Cutting Salt
- Should Hospitals Serve Only Healthy Food?
- Should Vitamins Be Added by Law?
- A Little of What You Fancy?
- Why Dry Land Turns to Dust
- How a Dew Pond Collects Water
- How a Solar Cooker Works
- The Dingo Fence of Australia
- The Bacteria Beneath the Crop
Key food and agriculture vocabulary
Words worth knowing before you read about food and agriculture, each with the sentence it appears in.
| Word | Meaning | Example from a passage |
|---|---|---|
| ferment verb | to break sugars down chemically, producing gas, alcohol or acid | “Yeasts, which are single-celled fungi, ferment sugars and release carbon dioxide and ethanol” Test 418 |
| accumulated verb | gradually built up or collected in increasing amounts over time | “supplies new food and dilutes the acids that have accumulated” Test 418 |
| proportions noun | the relative amounts of the different parts making up a whole | “The acids themselves are of two main kinds, and their proportions shape the flavour.” Test 418 |
| maintain verb | to keep something going and in good condition over a long period | “Some bakeries maintain the same culture year after year” Test 418 |
| disputed adjective | argued about because people disagree and no answer is settled | “Whether differences in flavour come from the microbes themselves or from the way the dough is handled is still disputed.” Test 418 |
| selection noun | the process of choosing which plants or animals will breed, so that useful features increase | “suggesting that selection for bigger, fleshier fruit had begun long before any written record” Test 428 |
| arid adjective | extremely dry, with very little rain | “The stable, arid conditions preserved plant remains that would elsewhere have rotted” Test 428 |
| curiosity noun | an unusual thing that attracts interest but is not in general use | “Wherever it went it remained a local curiosity for centuries” Test 428 |
| monounsaturated adjective | describing a type of fat thought to be healthier than saturated fat | “is about fifteen per cent fat, most of it monounsaturated, the kind also found in olive oil” Test 428 |
| commodity noun | a product that is bought and sold in large quantities across the world | “The avocado's journey from a forest tree to a global commodity took thousands of years” Test 428 |
| dormant adjective | not growing or active, and resting until conditions improve | “It grows from a bulb-like corm that lies dormant through the summer” Test 431 |
| adulterated adjective | made less pure by having something cheaper or harmful added | “sellers of adulterated material faced severe penalties” Test 431 |
| sparingly adverb | in small amounts, so as not to use too much | “saffron was used sparingly as a dye for cloth” Test 431 |
| labour-intensive adjective | needing a great deal of human work rather than machines | “Everything about the crop is labour-intensive: the flowers must be picked by hand” Test 431 |
| volatile adjective | easily turning into a gas at normal temperatures | “the volatile compound responsible for the spice's distinctive aroma” Test 431 |
| cured verb | treated by drying, heating or other processes so that a food develops flavour and keeps well | “which must then be cured for months before the aroma develops” Test 437 |
| monopoly noun | the position of being the only place that produces or supplies something | “For the next three centuries, however, vanilla remained a Mexican monopoly.” Test 437 |
| cultivated verb | grew plants deliberately, preparing land and caring for them rather than gathering them wild | “The people who first cultivated the plant were the Totonacs” Test 437 |
| swings noun | large changes from one level or condition to another, especially in prices | “exposed to violent swings in price, since a good harvest in one year can depress the price” Test 437 |
| delicate adjective | easily damaged and needing careful handling | “the flower's structure is delicate and the early attempts rarely succeeded” Test 437 |
| domesticated verb | bred and adapted by humans from a wild form | “the tomato itself was domesticated much further north, in what is now Mexico” Test 452 |
| resemblance noun | a similarity in appearance between two things | “a resemblance between the tomato and some of its relatives was enough to raise doubts” Test 452 |
| unwholesome adjective | harmful or unhealthy to eat | “the belief that the fruit was unwholesome lingered in rural districts for decades” Test 452 |
| surplus adjective | left over after what is needed has been used | “the surplus crop was preserved by drying and pressing it” Test 452 |
Question types in these passages
- True / False / Not Given · 22 passages
- Matching information · 19 passages
- Multiple choice (choose more than one) · 18 passages
- Summary completion · 18 passages
- Note completion · 14 passages
- Multiple choice · 13 passages
- Yes / No / Not Given · 10 passages
- Matching headings · 9 passages
- Sentence completion · 8 passages
- Short-answer questions · 7 passages
- Matching features · 7 passages
- Flow-chart completion · 5 passages
- Diagram label completion · 4 passages
- Matching sentence endings · 4 passages
- Summary completion (word list) · 4 passages
- Table completion · 4 passages