Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30 minute program from the Voice of America.

I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Mario Ritter Jr. This program is

designed for English learners so we speak a little slower and we use words and phrases especially written for people learning English.

On today's program you will hear reports from Jill Robbins and Brian Lynn.

Later Mario Ritter Jr. presents this week's education report. We close the show with the

lesson of the day from Faith Perlow and Andrew Smith. But first, in the Japanese village of Kamehomi,

a small group of farmers began gathering their rice

in extreme heat, two weeks earlier than usual.

Kami Momi is in Japan's Western Okayama Prefecture.

The area is called the land of sunshine because of its good weather.

But farmers working in the mountainside rice fields say climate change is hurting the harvest of rice.

Jojie TeraSaka farms in Okiyama.

He said last year a hot period dried up the rice. He added, I am worried about that this year because it will be just as hot.

This year Japan had its hottest July on record.

The Japan Weather Agency said temperatures were 2.16 degrees Celsius higher than average. Worldwide, there has been a 1.2 degrees Celsius rise in average temperature since 1850.

Scientists agreed that warming needs to be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

Last year Japan had a poor rice harvest nationwide because of unusually hot weather.

Officials say that drop in harvest in Japan was partly responsible for a shortage of rice this summer. The low supply of rice in markets

forced sellers to limit each buyer to one rice bag.

Yuji Masutomi is a researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in

Skuba, north of Tokyo.

He said,

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