From VOA Learning English, this is the Agriculture Report.
这里是美国之音慢速英语农业报道。
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.
气候变化已经引起了海平面上升。这增加了沿海农场使用的淡水的含盐量。因此农民们越来越无法利用靠近大海的土地。
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.
科学家称这一过程为“盐碱化”。这个术语源于盐水这个单词，盐水的意思是盐和水的混合物。联合国粮农组织称，盐碱化每年导致全球灌溉土地减少1%到2%。灌溉是指从其它地区调来淡水供给土地的过程。
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.
但荷兰的一位农民现在用海水和淡水混合物种植健康美味的蔬菜。马克·范·里杰斯尔伯格（Marc Van Rijsselberghe）开始了一项实验，他把几种作物放入盐水中。
"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."
“我们在这些地里种了很多作物，然后把它们分别放到淡水、海水，以及各种淡水和海水的混合物中。然后我们观察哪种能存活，哪种会死去。”
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.
范·里杰斯尔伯格先生同阿姆斯特丹自由大学的几位科学家一起进行这个项目的研究。他把农场分成八个灌区，通过不同管道泵送淡水和海水，并用电脑程序控制生成8种不同含盐度的水。
"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."
“电脑显示‘开始’，然后不同含盐度的水流向地里开始滴灌。有些作物就会被（盐水）弄死，就是这样。”
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.
被称为传感器的电脑测量装置控制了水位和含盐度。范·里杰斯尔伯格先生表示，8个实验区域中的大部分区域都能收获蔬菜。这些蔬菜比淡水中种出来的要小。但他表示，它们的糖分和盐分更高，所以吃起来更美味。
"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."
他说，“这是一个奇迹。它不应该是一根胡萝卜，因为根据世界上现有的资料来说，它原本没法存活。”
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.
农民们种了胡萝卜，白菜，洋葱和甜菜。但他发现，土豆在海水和淡水混合物中长势比其它蔬菜更好。范·里杰斯尔伯格先生说，这些土豆中有4种土豆最近被送到了巴基斯坦。那里有数千公顷土地被盐碱化破坏。巴基斯坦农民将试验一下这种荷兰土豆能否在他们这些盐碱化的土地里生长。
And that's the VOA Learning English Agriculture Report. For more agriculture and environment stories, go to our website 51voa.com. I'm Caty Weaver.
以上就是本期美国之音慢速英语农业报道的全部内容。更多农业和环境新闻，请访问我们的网站51voa.com。我是卡蒂·韦弗(Caty Weaver)。(51VOA.COM对本文翻译保留全部权利，未经授权请勿转载，违者必究！)