剑桥雅思18Test1Passage1阅读原文翻译 Urban farming 城市农业 剑桥雅思18阅读第一 […]

剑桥雅思18Test1Passage1阅读原文翻译 Urban farming 城市农业

剑桥雅思18阅读第一套题目第一篇文章的主题为城市农业。作者介绍了一种新型的无土栽培方式，包括其目前的发展状况，产量，相比于传统农业的优势，以及目前存在的一些限制。文章整体用词不难，结构也很简单，希望大家都能全对。

剑桥雅思18Test1Passage1阅读答案解析 Urban Farming 城市农业

老烤鸭原创翻译，请勿抄袭转载

引言

In Paris, urban farmers are trying a soil-free approach to agriculture that uses less space and fewer resources. Could it help cities face the threats to our food supplies?

在巴黎，城市农民正在尝试一种无土农业的方法，它所需要的空间更少，资源消耗更少。这种方法能否帮助城市应对我们食品供应的威胁呢？

第1段

On top of a striking new exhibition hall in southern Paris, the world’s largest urban rooftop farm has started to bear fruit. Strawberries that are small, intensely flavored and resplendently red sprout abundantly from large plastic tubes. Peer inside and you see the tubes are completely hollow, the roots of dozens of strawberry plants dangling down inside them. From identical vertical tubes nearby burst row upon row of lettuces; near those are aromatic herbs, such as basil, sage and peppermint. Opposite, in narrow, horizontal trays packed not with soil but with coconut fibre, grow cherry tomatoes, shiny aubergines and brightly coloured chards.

在巴黎南部一个引人注目的新展馆顶部，世界上最大的城市屋顶农场开始结出果实。小巧、香味浓郁且色彩鲜艳的草莓从大型塑料管中茁壮成长。往里面看，你会发现这些管子中间完全是空的，数十株草莓的根系悬挂在管子内部。附近相同的垂直管道中，一排又一排的莴苣茂密生长；在它们旁边则种植着如罗勒、鼠尾草和薄荷等香草。对面狭窄的水平盘子上填充着椰子纤维，而非土壤，里面生长着樱桃番茄、亮闪闪的茄子和色彩鲜艳的甜菜。

第2段

Pascal Hardy, an engineer and sustainable development consultant, began experimenting with vertical farming and aeroponic growing towers – as the soil-free plastic tubes are known – on his Paris apartment block roof five years ago. The urban rooftop space above the exhibition hall is somewhat bigger: 14,000 square metres and almost exactly the size of a couple of football pitches. Already, the team of young urban farmers who tend it have picked, in one day, 3,000 lettuces and 150 punnets of strawberries. When the remaining two thirds of the vast open area are in production, 20 staff will harvest up to 1,000 kg of perhaps 35 different varieties of fruit and vegetables, every day.”We’re not ever, obviously, going to feed the whole city this way,’ cautions Hardy.’In the urban environment, you’re working with very significant practical constraints, clearly, on what you can do and where. But if enough unused space can be developed like this, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t eventually target maybe between 5% and 10% of consumption.’

五年前，工程师和可持续发展顾问Pascal Hardy在他巴黎公寓的楼顶开始尝试垂直种植和气雾式生长塔（也称为无土塑料管）。展馆上方的城市屋顶空间则要大一些：面积达到14,000平方米，几乎相当于两个足球场的大小。目前，负责管理这片空间的年轻城市农民团队一天内就可以采摘3,000颗莴苣和150盒草莓。当这个巨大的开放区域剩下的三分之二开始生产时，20名员工每天将收获多达35个不同品种的水果和蔬菜，总重量可能高达1,000公斤。Hardy提醒道：“显然，我们不可能通过这种方式养活整个城市。在城市环境中，你肯定会遇到许多实际操作方面的限制，包括做什么和在哪里做。但如果能像该项目一样，开发足够多的未利用空间，那么没有理由不能最终达到消耗量的5%到10%。”

第3段

Perhaps most significantly, however, this is a real-life showcase for the work of Hardy’s flourishing urban agriculture consultancy, Agripolis, which is currently fielding enquiries from around the world to design, build and equip a new breed of soil-free inner-city farm.”The method’s advantages are many,’ he says.”First, I don’t much like the fact that most of the fruit and vegetables we eat have been treated with something like 17 different pesticides, or that the intensive farming techniques that produced them are such huge generators of greenhouse gases. I don’t much like the fact, either, that they’ve travelled an average of 2,000 refrigerated kilometres to my plate, that their quality is so poor, because the varieties are selected for their capacity to withstand such substantial journeys, or that 80% of the price I pay goes to wholesalers and transport companies, not the producers.’

然而，最重要的是，这是Hardy繁盛城市农业咨询公司Agripolis的实际展示。该公司目前正接受来自世界各地的咨询，设计、建设和装配一种新型的无土城市农场。“这种方法的优点很多，”他说道。“首先，我不太喜欢我们所吃的大多数水果和蔬菜都被喷洒过大约17种不同的农药，也不喜欢那些生产它们的密集农业技术所产生大量的温室气体。我还不太喜欢它们平均要经过2,000公里的冷藏运输才能到达我的餐盘。它们的品质很差，因为这些品种被选中是因为它们能够经受长途旅行。还有就是，我支付的80%的价格流向批发商和运输公司，而不是生产者。”

第4段

Produce grown using this soil-free method, on the other hand – which relies solely on a small quantity of water, enriched with organic nutrients, pumped around a closed circuit of pipes, towers and trays – is ‘produced up here, and sold locally, just down there. This article is from laokaoya website. It barely travels at all,’ Hardy says.”You can select crop varieties for their flavour, not their resistance to the transport and storage chain, and you can pick them when they’re really at their best, and not before.’No soil is exhausted, and the water that gently showers the plants’ roots every 12 minutes is recycled, so the method uses 90% less water than a classic intensive farm for the same yield.

另一方面，使用这种无土种植方法生产的农产品只需要少量富含有机营养物质的水。它们通过管道、塔和托盘的封闭循环进行泵送。Hardy说：“这些农产品在这里生长，然后在附近销售，几乎不需要任何运输。”他继续说：“你可以选择口感更好的农作物品种，而不是选择那些能够耐受运输和储存环节的品种，而且你可以在它们达到最佳状态时采摘，而不是提前采摘。”这种方法不会使土壤衰竭。每12分钟轻轻喷洒植物根部的水也会被循环利用。因此与传统密集农场相比，该方法的用水量减少了90%，但产量相同。

第5段

Urban farming is not, of course, a new phenomenon. Inner-city agriculture is booming from Shanghai to Detroit and Tokyo to Bangkok. Strawberries are being grown in disused shipping containers, mushrooms in underground car parks. Aeroponic farming, he says, is ‘virtuous’. The equipment weighs little, can be installed on almost any flat surface and is cheap to buy: roughly €10o to €15o per square metre. It is cheap to run, too, consuming a tiny fraction of the electricity used by some techniques.

城市农业当然并不是一个新现象。从上海到底特律，从东京到曼谷，城市内的农业生产正在蓬勃发展。草莓被种植在废弃的货运集装箱中，蘑菇文章来自老烤鸭雅思在地下停车场中生长。他说，气雾式农业是“有益的”。这种设备重量轻，几乎可以安装在任何平坦的表面上，而且价格便宜：大约每平方米100到150欧元。运行成本也很低，耗电量仅占某些技术所用电力微不足道的一小部分。

第6段

Produce grown this way typically sells at prices that, while generally higher than those of classic intensive agriculture, are lower than soil-based organic growers. There are limits to what farmers can grow this way, of course, and much of the produce is suited to the summer months.‘Root vegetables we cannot do, at least not yet,’ he says.’Radishes are OK, but carrots, potatoes, that kind of thing – the roots are simply too long. Fruit trees are obviously not an option. And beans tend to take up a lot of space for not much return.’ Nevertheless, urban farming of the kind being practised in Paris is one part of a bigger and fast-changing picture that is bringing food production closer to our lives.

通常来说，使用这种种植方式生产的农产品的售价，虽然高于传统密集农业，但低于基于土壤的有机农产品。当然，农民用这种方法种植作物会存在一些限制，而且很多农产品只适合夏季种植。“我们无法种植根类蔬菜，至少目前还不行，”他说。“萝卜还可以，但是胡萝卜、土豆之类的蔬菜根部太长了。果树显然不是一个可行之选。而豆类占用的空间相对较大，产量不高。”尽管如此，巴黎正在实施的这种城市农业是一个快速变化的、更大的图景中的一部分，它使得食品生产更加贴近我们的生活。

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