(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
From VOA Learning English, this is the Agriculture Report.
Climate change has caused a rise in sea levels. This has increased the amount of salt in fresh water used on coastal farms. As a result farmers are increasingly unable to use fields close to the sea.
Scientists call this process "salinization." The term comes from the word "saline" -- which means a mixture of salt and water. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says salinization is reducing the world's irrigated lands by 1 to 2 percent every year. Irrigation is the process of supplying land with fresh water from other areas.
But a farmer in the Netherlands is now using a mixture of sea and fresh water to grow healthy and tasty vegetables. Marc Van Rijsselberghe started with an experiment. He put several kinds of plants in saline.
"We put in a lot of plants in the fields and then we put in, put them in fresh water and in sea water and all the varieties between it, and then we see which variety is surviving and which variety is dying."
Mr. Van Rijsselberghe worked on the project with scientists from the Free University of Amsterdam. He divided a farm into eight irrigated areas. Separate pipes pumped fresh and sea water, and a computer program created water with eight levels of salinity.
"And then computer says ‘go' and then it goes to the fields and dripping irrigation starts to work and we are going to kill plants. That's it."
Computerized measuring devices called "sensors" controlled the water levels and the levels of salinity. Mr. Van Rijsselberghe says he was able to harvest vegetables from most of the eight test areas. He says the vegetables were smaller than those grown in fresh water. But he says they also have more sugar and salt, so they taste better.
"It's a miracle. I mean, it shouldn't be a carrot, it should be dying if we look at the datas that are available in the world at the moment."
The farmer grew carrots, cabbage, onions and beetroot. But he found that potatoes grew better than the other vegetables in the combination of sea and fresh water. Mr. Van Rijsselberghe says four kinds of these potatoes were recently sent to Pakistan, where thousands of hectares of land have been damaged by salinization. Farmers in Pakistan will test the Dutch potatoes to see if they can be grown in those fields.
And that's the VOA Learning English Agriculture Report. For more agriculture and environment stories, go to our website learningenglish.voanews.com. I'm Caty Weaver.
词汇解释
1.salinization n. 盐化作用，盐碱化
Salinization of agricultural lands was a big concern after the tsunami.
农用土地的盐渍化是海啸之后令人关注的一个大问题。
2.saline adj. 盐的；含盐分的 n. 盐湖；碱盐泻药
We try to revegetate the saline or alkaline lands near the seashore.
我们试图在海滨附近的盐碱地上重种植物。
3.beetroot n. 甜菜的根
Dice the beetroot neatly.
将甜菜根切成整齐的小方块。
内容解析
1.Mr. Van Rijsselberghe worked on the project with scientists from the Free University of Amsterdam.
work on 影响，对…起作用；继续工作；从事于…；设法说服
The scientists are still working on inventing new methods of reaching outer space.
科学家们仍致力于发明到达外层空间的新方法。
The doctor told him that this kind of medicine may work on him.
医生对他说这种药对他可能有效。
参考译文
这里是美国之音慢速英语农业报道。
气候变化会导致海平面上升，这就导致沿海农场使用的淡水中含盐量增多，结果农民们越发难以在沿海农田里耕作。
科学家称这一过程为“盐碱化”，这个词汇来自盐水这个词，也就是盐和水的混合物。联合国粮农组织称盐碱化使得全世界可灌溉土地减少1%到2%，灌溉就是将淡水从别的区域输送到田地的过程。
但荷兰的一个农民现在使用海水和淡水的混合物来种植健康美味的蔬菜，马克·范·里杰斯尔伯格开始了这个试验，他把几种作物放在盐水中。
“我们把很多作物种在田间，然后把它们分别放到海水、淡水和各种淡水和海水的混合物，看哪种能存活下来，哪种会死掉。”
范·里杰斯尔伯格和阿姆斯特丹自由大学的几位科学家一起进行这个项目，他把农场成为8个灌溉区域，用不同的管道来输送淡水和海水，并用电脑程序生成8种不同浓度的盐水。
“然后电脑显示‘开始’，于是不同浓度的灌溉水开始灌溉，有的植物就会被杀死。”
名为传感器的电脑测量装置控制水位和盐度，范·里杰斯尔伯格说，8个实验区域大都能收获蔬菜，他说这样种植的蔬菜比淡水中个头要小些，不过他说因为这种蔬菜含有更多的糖分和盐分，所以口味更好。
“这是个奇迹，它不应该是个胡萝卜，因为根据世界上现有资料，它根本没法存活。”
这位农民种植胡萝卜、大白菜、洋葱和甜菜，不过他发现在海水和淡水的混合物中，土豆比其他蔬菜长得更好。范·里杰斯尔伯格说其中4种土豆最近被送到巴基斯坦，那里有数千公顷土地被盐碱化，巴基斯坦的农民将实验这种荷兰土豆，看是否能在本国土地上生长。
这就是美国之音慢速英语健康报道农业报道，登陆learningenglish.voanews.com获得更多农业和环境报道，我是凯蒂·韦弗。
