新加坡“空中农场”为未来农业提供新思路 | 纽约时报精讲第689期

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本文选自《经济学人》7月4日刊文章。新加坡向天空寻求土地的方式为未来农业提供新思路。在寸土寸金的新加坡，农业用地不足1%，粮食依赖进口的新加坡受全球粮食市场波动的影响非常大，所以新加坡将农业用地转向天空，通过堆放式种植，在垂直方向上实现空间利用效率最大化，再通过调节温度、湿度、二氧化碳、光线、水和营养，生产出美味高产的农产品。这为未来农业提供新思路，农业探索不仅可以深入地下，也可以面向天空。

选文精讲

The rise of the rooftop farmer  屋顶农民崛起

Singapore looks to the skies—for fields

新加坡为寻求土地，将目光转向了天空

Government subsidies make excellent fertiliser

政府补贴成为（空中农业的）优质肥料

• subsidy: 补贴

Jul 4th 2020 | SINGAPORE

BENJAMIN SWAN’S farm is on the fourth floor of an office building in an industrial part of Singapore. To see his crops, visitors are escorted past a door unlocked with a thumbprint and through an airlock. (“Our air is certified,” says an assistant.) Room after room is filled with plumes of kale and lettuce, evenly spaced on long trays stacked in floor-to-ceiling racks. Cables snake across the racks and ceilings, like an electrical root system. LED lights, designed to emit only the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that plants can absorb, cast a purple glow. The greens are planted in a substrate—not a speck of soil is in sight.

• kale: 甘蓝（一种植物）
• lettuce: 生菜
• a speck of: 一点点

本杰明·斯旺的农场位于新加坡工业区一幢办公楼的四楼。要参观他的庄稼，参观者必须经过一扇用指纹解锁的门，然后穿过气闸(一位助手说“我们的空气是经过认证的”)。每个房间都摆满了甘蓝和生菜，它们均匀地分布在长长的托盘上，摆放这些托盘的架子从地板一直堆到天花板。电缆蜿蜒穿过架子和天花板，就像一个电力根系。LED灯被设计成只能发出植物能吸收的那部分电磁波谱，发出紫光。绿色植物被种植在基质，看不到一丝土壤。

Singapore is a hymn to concrete and metal. But look closely and you can see farms mushrooming across the city-state: on the roofs of malls and car parks, in schools, warehouses and even the site of a former prison. This is new. Commercial farming in the land-scarce city was phased out in the 1970s and 1980s. “Unlike virtually any other country on earth, Singapore has lost a generation of farmers,” says Bradley Busetto of the Global Centre for Technology, Innovation and Sustainable Agriculture, a UN outfit based in Singapore. Today just 720 square kilometres of land, less than 1% of Singapore, is set aside for farms. But a new crop of entrepreneurs are betting on rewards from finding idle spaces where lettuces may be coaxed to life. Since 2014, 31 commercial urban farms have sprouted.

• mushroom: 迅速增加
• phase out: 逐步淘汰
• bet on: 赌注押在...上
• sprout: 原意是指“发芽、生长”，这里指“出现、（使）涌现出”

新加坡充斥着混凝土和金属。但仔细观察，你会发现，在这个城市国家，农场如雨后春笋般涌现：在商场和停车场的屋顶上，在学校、仓库、甚至在一处曾经是监狱的地方，这是新型（农场）。20世纪70年代和80年代，商业农业在这个土地稀缺的城市被逐步淘汰。总部位于新加坡的联合国机构——全球技术、创新和可持续农业中心的Bradley Busetto表示：“与地球上几乎任何其他国家不同，新加坡失去了一代农民。”如今，在新加坡只有720平方公里的土地上，不足1%被用作农田。但是，一群新兴企业家正把赌注押在可以种植生菜的闲置空间的回报上。自2014年以来，31家商业城市农场如雨后春笋般涌现。

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