【英译汉必选】

　　Farms go out of business for many reasons, but few farms do merely because the soil has failed. That is the miracle of farming. If you care for the soil, it will last — and yield — nearly forever. America is such a young country that we have barely tested that. For most of our history, there has been new land to farm, and we still farm as though there always will be.

　　Still, there are some very old farms out there. The oldest is the Tuttle farm, near Dover, N.H., which is also one of the oldest business enterprises in America. It made the news last week because its owner — a lineal descendant of John Tuttle, the original settler — has decided to go out of business. It was founded in 1632. I hear its sweet corn is legendary.

　　The year 1632 is unimaginably distant. In 1632, Galileo was still publishing, and John Locke was born. There were perhaps 10,000 colonists in all of America, only a few hundred of them in New Hampshire. The Tuttle acres, then, would have seemed almost as surrounded as they do in 2010, but by forest instead of highways and houses.

　　It was a precarious operation at the start — as all farming was in the new colonies—and it became precarious enough again in these past few years to peter out at last. The land is protected by a conservation easement so it can’t be developed, but no one knows whether the next owner will farm it.

　　In a letter on their Web site, the Tuttles cite “exhaustion of resources” as the reason to sell the farm. The exhausted resources they list include bodies, minds, hearts, imagination, equipment, machinery and finances. They do not mention soil, which has been renewed and redeemed repeatedly. It’s as though the parishioners of the First Parish Church in nearby Dover — erected nearly 200 years later, in 1829 — had rebuilt the structure on the same spot every few years.

　　It is too simple to say, as the Tuttles have, that the recession killed a farm that had survived for nearly 400 years. What killed it was the economic structure of food production. Each year it has become harder for family farms to compete with industrial scale agriculture — heavily subsidized by the government — underselling them at every turn. In a system committed to the health of farms and their integration with local communities, the result would have been different. In 1632, and for many years after, the Tuttle farm was a necessity. In 2010, it is suddenly superfluous, or so we like to pretend.

　　【参考译文】

　　导致农场破产的原因有很多种，但是少数农场的破产仅仅是由于土地退化的原因所造成的，这算是农业上的奇迹。如果你能够照料好土地，那么它就几乎可以永远地产出。美国是这样一个年轻的国度，以至于我们几乎无法进行验证。因为在我们大部分历史中，总会有新的土地被开垦成农场，我们不断地耕作，好像资源取之不尽。

　　然而，还是有一些上了岁数的农场破产了。其中历史最有悠久的莫过于“塔特尔农场”——它位于美国新罕布什尔州多佛市附近，也是美国历史最悠久的商业公司之一。最近，它的所有人——即农场创始人约翰.塔特尔的直系继承人——宣告破产，从而再次成为新闻。塔特尔农场始建于1632年。我听说它出产的甜玉米是个传奇。

　　1632年，一个遥远得令人无法想象的岁月。1632年，伽利略还在出版他的着作，约翰.洛克(着名的英国哲学家)才刚刚出生。在整片美国土地上大概有1万个殖民者，而在新罕布什尔州只有区区几百人。那时的塔特尔耕地可能与2010年一样被团团包围着，只不过大片森林为高度公路和房子所代替。

　　就像所有新的殖民地上的农业一样，一开始塔特尔的经营也非常不稳定。在过去数年中，这样的不稳定状况旧病复发，最终导致农场一步步滑向破产的深渊。受到资源保护的限制(译者注：easement是地役权)，不能对土地进行开发。但是没有人知道农场的下一位主人是否会继续耕作。

　　在“塔特尔农场”的网站上，塔特尔家族在一封致公众信中将“资源枯竭”作为出售农场的原因。他们所列举的枯竭资源包括：人力、脑力、想象力、设备、机器和资金，却压根没提被多次翻新并帮助他们树立威信的土地。这就好像多佛市附近、始建于1829年的First Parish Church的教区居民每过几年就在同一个地方重建教堂一样。

　　塔特尔家族的人将有着近400历史的农场的破产归咎于土地退化，这理由未免太过简单。使其破产的真正原因其实是食品生产的经济结构。每一年，家庭农场都要跟工业规模化的农业企业进行竞争，日子越来越煎熬。这些企业享受政府大力补贴扶持，以各种渠道以低价出售粮食。在一个致力于农场健康并促进农场与当地社区融合一体的体系里，结果本不该如此。在1632年以及之后的许多年，塔特尔农场不可或缺。然而到了2010年，它突然成了多余的东西，或者说被我们看作是一个累赘。