英语听力汇总   |   演讲MP3+双语文稿:室内垂直农场是农业的未来趋势吗?

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更新日期:2022-01-19浏览次数:0次所属教程:TED音频

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听力原文

听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿,供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:室内垂直农场是农业的未来趋势吗?,希望你会喜欢!

【演讲者及介绍】Stuart Oda

Stuart Oda是一位对创新和可持续发展充满激情的室内城市农民。他的目标是:通过生产方式和知识的民主化,使获得新鲜营养食品的途径民主化。

【演讲主题】室内垂直农场是农业的未来趋势吗?

Are indoor vertical farms the future of agriculture?

【中英文字幕】

翻译者psjmz mz校对者Diana Zhang

So if you live on planet Earth and you're one of seven billion people that eats food every day, I need you to pay attention, because over the next three decades, we will need to address one of the most critical global challenges of our generation. And I'm not talking about climate change. I'm talking about food and agriculture. In 2050, our global population is projected to reach 9.8 billion, with 68 percent of us living in urban city centers. In order to feed this massive population, we will need to increase our agricultural output by 70 percent over current levels. Just to put this number into perspective, we will need to grow more food in the next 35 to 40 years than the previous 10,000 years combined. Put simply, not only is our global population becoming bigger, but it's also getting denser, and we will need to grow significantly more food using significantly less land and resources.

如果你生活在地球上,并且是每天需要食物的70亿人中的一员,我需要你注意,因为在接下来30年,我们将必须应对我们这个时代最重要的全球挑战。我不是在说气候变暖,我在讨论食物和农业。2050年,全球人口预计将达到98亿人,68%的人将生活在城市里面。为了养活这么大规模的人口,我们需要把现有的农业产出规模增加70%。为了让你们对这个数字有个概念,这相当于在未来35-40年,需要增加的食物将会超过过去1万年的总和。简单来讲,我们的全球人口不仅变得更多,也变得更密集,并且我们必须用更有限的土地和资源去种植更多的粮食。

Complicating our current efforts to address these major demographic shifts are the challenges facing the agricultural industry today. Globally, one third of all the food that we produce is wasted, acquitting to 1.6 billion tons of food that spoiled on the way to the market or expired in our refrigerators or were simply thrown out by supermarkets and restaurants at the end of the day. Every single year, up to 600 million people will get sick eating contaminated food, highlighting the challenge that we have of maintaining global food safety. And, maybe unsurprisingly, the agricultural industry is the single largest consumer of fresh water, accounting for 70 percent of global usage.

当前农业面临的挑战使我们当前应对这些重大人口变化的努力复杂化了。从全球来看,我们生产的食物有1/3被浪费了,相当于16亿吨的食物在运往市场的途中烂掉,或者躺在我们的冰箱里过期,又或者被超市和餐饮在每天打烊时丢弃掉。每年,多达6亿的人因为吃被污染的食物而患病,凸显了我们维持全球食品安全的挑战。此外,大家不难想象,农业产业是最大的单一淡水消费领域,占全球使用量的70%。

Now, you'll be relieved to know that the agricultural industry and that the global movement by universities, companies and NGOs is putting together comprehensive research and developing novel technology to address all of these issues. And many have been doing it for decades. But one of the more recent innovations in food production being deployed in industrial parks in North America, in the urban city centers of Asia, and even in the arid deserts of the Middle East is controlled environment agriculture.

听到下面的消息你可能会感到轻松一些:农业产业以及由大学,公司和非营利组织发起的全球运动正在推动全面的研究和开发新的技术来解决这些问题。很多机构已经致力于这个领域长达几十年。但最近有一个食物生产方面的创新被部署在了北美的工业园区,在亚洲的城市中心,甚至是中东干旱的沙漠中,那就是可控环境农业。

Controlled environment agriculture is actually just a fancy way of saying weather- or climate-proof farming, and many of these farms grow food three-dimensionally in vertical racks, as opposed to the two dimensions of conventional farms. And so this type of food production is also referred to as indoor vertical farming.

可控环境农业是对不受天气或者环境影响的农业的花俏叫法,与传统的二维农场不同,许多这样的农场在垂直的架子上立体地种植粮食作物。所以这种类型的食物生产模式也叫做室内垂直农场。

I've been involved in the indoor vertical farming space for the past five and a half years, developing technology to make this type of food production more efficient and affordable.

在过去5年半的时间里,我一直涉足室内垂直农场领域,开发能让这种类型的食物生产更加高效和低成本的技术。

Indoor vertical farming is a relatively recent phenomena, commercially speaking, and the reason for this is that consumers care more about food safety and where their food comes from, and also, the necessary technology to make this possible is more readily available and lower cost, and the overall cost of food production globally is actually increasing, making this type of food production more competitive.

从商业角度讲,室内垂直农场是最近才出现的现象,原因在于消费者越来越关注食物安全和他们食物的产地,并且让这一切成为可能的必要技术也已经变得更容易获取,更廉价;另外,全球食物生产的成本其实在增加,使得这类食物生产更具竞争力。

So if you want to build an indoor vertical farm, you will need to replace some of the conventional elements of farming with artificial substitutes, starting with sunlight. In indoor vertical farms, natural sunlight is replaced with artificial lighting like LEDs. While there are many different types of LEDs being used, the one that we decided to install here is called "full spectrum LEDs," which was optimized for the type of vegetables that we were growing. Also, in order to maximize production for a given space, indoor vertical farms also utilize and install racking systems to grow vegetables vertically, and some of the biggest facilities stack their production 14 to 16 floors high.

所以如果你想要建造室内垂直农场,你将需要用人工替代品取代传统的农场元素,从阳光开始。在室内垂直农场,自然光源由LED这样的人工光源代替。虽然有许多不同类型的LED被使用,我们决定安装在这里的叫做“全光谱LED”,专门针对我们种植的蔬菜进行了优化。同时,为了在给定空间中最大化产出,室内垂直农场也会利用和安装货架系统来立体种植蔬菜。有些最大的设施把它们的产品排布到14-16层楼高。

Now most of these farms are hydroponic or aeroponic systems, which means that instead of using soil, they use a substitute material like polyurethane sponges, biodegradable peat moss and even use inorganic materials like perlite and clay pellets. Another unique aspects about these farms is that they use a precise nutrient formula that is circulated and recycled throughout the facility, and this is pumped directly to the vegetables' root zone to promote plant growth. And lastly, these farms use a sophisticated monitoring and automation system to significantly increase productivity, efficiency and consistency, and these tools also provide the added benefit of producing food that is more traceable and safe.

这些农场大多是水培或气培系统,这意味着使用的不是土壤,而是聚氨酯海绵,可生物降解的泥煤苔之类的替代材料,甚至是无机材料,如珍珠岩和粘土球团。这些农场的另一个独特之处是它们使用的精准养分配方在整个设施内不断被循环和回收,并直接输送到蔬菜的根部来促进植物的生长。最后,这些农场使用复杂的监控和自动化系统,显著提高了产量,效率和一致性,这些工具也会给生产的食物带来更容易追踪和更安全的额外好处。

Some of the obvious benefits of growing food in this way is that you have year-round vegetable production, you have consistent quality and you have predictable output. Some of the other major benefits include significant resource use efficiencies, particularly water. For every kilogram of vegetables grown in this way, hundreds of liters of water is conserved compared to conventional farming methods. And with the water savings come similar savings in the use of fertilizer. One of the highest-yielding farms grows over 350 times more food per square meter than a conventional farm. And weatherproofing means complete control of incoming contaminants and pests, completely eliminating the need for the use of chemical pesticides. And not to be mistaken, these farms can produce enormous amounts of food, with one of the biggest facilities producing 30,000 heads of vegetables a day.

这种方式培育粮食作物的一些明显的好处是,你全年都可以生产蔬菜,且品质一致,你还可以预测产出。其他一些主要好处包括显著的资源利用效率,尤其是水。以这种方式种植的每公斤蔬菜,与传统的耕作方法相比,可以节省数百公升的水。在省水的同时,化肥的使用也有所下降。一个产量最高的农场每平方米种植的粮食比传统农场高350多倍。耐候性意味着完全控制外来的污染和害虫,完全不需要使用化学杀虫剂。需要澄清的是,这些农场可以生产大量的食物,最大的一个工厂每天可生产3万颗蔬菜。

However, as with any new technology or innovation, there are some drawbacks. As you would imagine, growing food in this way can be incredibly energy-intensive. Also, these farms can only produce a small variety of vegetables commercially and the overall cost of the production still is quite high.

然而,跟任何新的技术或创新一样,这项技术也存在一些不足。你应该可以想象,以这种方式种植食物会消耗大量的能量。此外,这些农场只能商业化生产少量品种的蔬菜,且整体的生产成本仍然相当高。

And in order to address these issues, some of the biggest and most sophisticated farms are making significant investments, starting with energy efficiency. In order to reduce the high energy usage, there are efforts to develop higher-efficiency LEDs, to develop lasers optimized for plant growth and using even fiber-optic cables like these to channel sunlight directly into an indoor vertical farm during the day to reduce the need for artificial lighting.

为了解决这些问题,一些最大、最先进的农场做了大规模的投资,从能源效率开始。为了降低过高的能源消耗,人们尝试着开发更高效的LED,开发适合植物生长的激光器,并且使用像这样的光纤电缆在白天将阳光直接导入室内垂直农场以减少对人工照明的需求。

Also, to reduce the labor costs associated with hiring a more sophisticated, more urban and also more high-skilled labor force, robotics in automation is used extensively in large-scale facilities. And you can never really be too resource-efficient. Building indoor vertical farms in and around urban city centers can help to shorten the agricultural supply chain and also help to maintain the nutritional content in vegetables. Also, there are food deserts in many countries that have little to no access to nutritious vegetables, and as this industry matures, it will become possible to provide more equitable access to high-quality, highly nutritious vegetables in even the most underprivileged of communities.

同样,为了降低因雇佣更加熟练,更城市化和拥有更高技能的劳动力所带来的高成本,机器自动化在大型设施中得到了广泛应用。你永远不可能实现资源的真正高效利用。将室内垂直农场建在都市或都市周边可以帮助缩短农业供应链,并维持蔬菜的营养含量。此外,在很多国家都存在食物沙漠地区,那里的人没法得到有营养的蔬菜,随着这个行业的成熟,即便是最贫穷的社区也能够得到高质量,高营养的蔬菜供应。

And finally, and this is really exciting for me personally, indoor vertical farming can actually be integrated seamlessly into the cityscape to help repurpose idle, underutilized and unused urban infrastructure. In fact, this is already happening today. Ride-sharing services have taken hundreds of thousands of cars off the road and they have significantly reduced the need for parking.

最后,也是我个人尤为兴奋的一点,室内垂直农场可以与城市景观进行无缝融合,来帮助重新利用闲置、未充分利用和未使用的城市基础设施。事实上,目前这样的事已经在发生了。共享汽车服务减少了数百万辆汽车的出行,并且显著减少了对停车空间的需求。

This is a farm that we installed in central Beijing in an underutilized underground parking structure to grow vegetables for the nearby hotels. Underutilized infrastructure is not simply limited to large-scale civil engineering projects, and they can also include smaller spaces like idle restaurant corners. This is an example of a farm that we installed directly into the partition of a hotel entrance in order to grow fresh herbs and microgreens on-site for the chefs. Honestly, if you look around, you will find underutilized space everywhere, under, around and inside of urban developments.

这个我们在北京市中心安装的农场位于一个未被充分利用的地下停车场,用于为附近的酒店种植蔬菜。未充分利用的基础设施不仅限于大型土木工程项目,它们也可以包括较小的空间,如空闲的餐厅角落。这是一个我们直接安装在酒店入口隔墙的农场,用来给厨师们现场提供新鲜的香料和蔬菜。老实说,如果你环顾四周,你会发现到处都是未被充分利用的空间——城区的地下,周围和内部。

I get to be a part of all these cool projects and working in the agricultural industry to improve access and affordability to fresh and nutritious produce, hopefully soon by anyone anywhere, has been the greatest joy and also the most humbling and intellectually challenging thing I've ever done.

我有幸成为了农业产业中这些超酷项目的一员,协助提高新鲜营养农产品的普及度和可负担性,希望很快能惠及任何地方的任何人。这是我所做过的最快乐,也是最谦卑和最具挑战的事情。

And now that I've convinced you that agriculture can be quite sexy, you'll be surprised and shocked to know that I still have trouble fully articulating how and why I decided to work, and continue to work, in the agricultural industry. But a couple of years ago, I found a rather unique answer hiding in plain sight. You see, I read an article about how your name, particularly your last name, can have a strong influence on everything from your personality to your professional career. This is my Japanese last name: Oda. And the characters translate literally into "small farm."

现在我已经证明了农业也可以非常性感,但你们也会很惊讶,甚至很震惊的发现,我仍然很难去充分阐明我是如何,以及为什么决定在农业产业工作,并将持续工作下去。但在几年前,我无意间找到了一个相当独特的答案。我阅读过一篇文章,是关于你的名字,尤其是你的姓氏,如何对你的性格,你的专业领域等一切事情产生强大的影响。这是我的日语姓氏:Oda.这个词在字面上的翻译是“小农场”。

(Laughter)

(笑声)

Thank you.

谢谢。

(Applause)

(鼓掌)