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C4
Crop-growing skyscrapers – Reading
1
By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the Earth’s population will live in urban centres.
Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the
human population will increase by about three billion people by then. An
estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% larger than Brazil) will be
needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming methods
continue as they are practised today. At present, throughout the world, over 80%
of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use. Historically, some 15% of
that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to
ensure enough food for the world’s population to live on?

The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes
and other produce has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent
need to scale up this technology to accommodate another three billion people.
Many believe an entirely new approach to indoor farming is required, employing
cutting-edge technologies. One such proposal is for the “Vertical Farm”. The
concept is of multi-storey buildings in which food crops are grown in
environmentally controlled conditions. Situated in the heart of urban centres,
they would drastically reduce the amount of transportation required to bring
food to consumers. Vertical farms would need to be efficient, cheap to construct
and safe to operate. If successfully implemented, proponents claim, vertical farms
offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied
food supply (through year-round production of all crops), and the eventual
repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.
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It took humans 10,000 years to learn how to grow most of the crops we now take
for granted. Along the way, we despoiled most of the land we worked, often
turning verdant, natural ecozones into semi-arid deserts. Within that same time
frame, we evolved into an urban species, in which 60% of the human population
now lives vertically in cities. This means that, for the majority, we humans have
shelter from the elements, yet we subject our food-bearing plants to the rigours
of the great outdoors and can do no more than hope for a good weather year.
However, more often than not now, due to a rapidly changing climate, that is not
what happens. Massive floods, long droughts, hurricanes and severe monsoons
take their toll each year, destroying millions of tons of valuable crops.

The supporters of vertical farming claim many potential advantages for the
system. For instance, crops would be produced all year round, as they would be
kept in artificially controlled, optimum growing conditions. There would be no
weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods or pests. All the food could
be grown organically, eliminating the need for herbicides, pesticides and
fertilisers. The system would greatly reduce the incidence of many infectious
diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface. Although the system
would consume energy, it would return energy to the grid via methane
generation from composting non-¬edible parts of plants. It would also
dramatically reduce fossil fuel use, by cutting out the need for tractors, ploughs
and shipping.

A major drawback of vertical farming, however, is that the plants would require
artificial light. Without it, those plants nearest the windows would be exposed to
more sunlight and grow more quickly, reducing the efficiency of the system.
Single-storey greenhouses have the benefit of natural overhead light: even so,
many still need artificial lighting. A multi-storey facility with no natural overhead
light would require far more. Generating enough light could be prohibitively
expensive, unless cheap, renewable energy is available, and this appears to be
rather a future aspiration than a likelihood for the near future.
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One variation on vertical farming that has been developed is to grow plants in
stacked trays that move on rails. Moving the trays allows the plants to get enough
sunlight. This system is already in operation, and works well within a single-
storey greenhouse with light reaching it from above: it is not certain, however,
that it can be made to work without that overhead natural light.

Vertical farming is an attempt to address the undoubted problems that we face in

producing enough food for a growing population. At the moment, though, more
needs to be done to reduce the detrimental impact it would have on the
environment, particularly as regards the use of energy. While it is possible that
much of our food will be grown in skyscrapers in future, most experts currently
believe it is far more likely that we will simply use the space available on urban
rooftops.

Questions 1-7
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.
 

Indoor farming

1. Some food plants, including ………………………..  are already grown indoors.

2. Vertical farms would be located in ……………………….., meaning that there would
be less need to take them long distances to customers.
3. Vertical farms could use methane from plants and animals to produce
………………………...
4. The consumption of ……………………….. would be cut because agricultural
vehicles would be unnecessary.
5. The fact that vertical farms would need ……………………….. light is a
disadvantage.
6. One form of vertical farming involves planting in ……………………….. which are
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not fixed.
7. The most probable development is that food will be grown on
………………………..  in towns and cities.  

Questions 8-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage
1?
In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE       if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE    if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN    if there is no information on this

8. Methods for predicting the Earth’s population have recently changed.

9. Human beings are responsible for some of the destruction to food-producing
land.
10. The crops produced in vertical farms will depend on the season.
11. Some damage to food crops is caused by climate change.
12. Fertilisers will be needed or certain crops in vertical farms.
13. Vertical farming will make plants less likely to be affected by infectious
diseases.

Making Every Drop Count – Reading 2

A
The history of human civilization is entwined with the history of ways we have
learned to manipulate water resources. As towns gradually expanded, water was
brought from increasingly remote sources, leading to sophisticated engineering
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efforts such as dams and aqueducts. At the height of the Roman Empire, nine
major systems, with an innovative layout of pipes and well-built sewers, supplied
the occupants of Rome with as much water per person as is provided in many
parts of the industrial world today.

B
During the industrial revolution and population explosion of the 19th and 20th
centuries, the demand for water rose dramatically. Unprecedented construction
of tens of thousands of monumental engineering projects designed to control
floods, protect clean water supplies, and provide water for irrigation and
hydropower brought great benefits to hundreds of millions of people. Food
production has kept pace with soaring populations mainly because of the
expansion of artificial irrigation system that makes possible the growth of 40% of
the world's food. Nearly one-fifth of all the electricity generated worldwide is
produced by turbines spun by the power of falling water.

C
Yet there is a dark side to this picture: despite our progress, half of the world's
population till suffers, with water services inferior to those available to the
ancient Greeks and Romans. As the United Nations report on access to water
reiterated in November 2001, more than one billion people lack access to clean
drinking water: some two and half billion do not have adequate sanitation
services. Preventable water-related diseases kill an estimated 10,000 to 20,000
children every day, and the latest evidence suggests that we are falling behind in
efforts to solve their problems.

D
The consequences of our water policies extend beyond jeopardizing human
health. Tens of millions of people have been forced to move from their homes -
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often with little warning or compensation - to make way for the reservoirs
behind dams. More than 20% of all freshwater fish species are now threatened or
endangered because dams and water withdrawals have destroyed the free-
flowing river ecosystems where they thrive. Certain irrigation practices degrade
soil quality and reduce agricultural productivity. Groundwater aquifers* are
being pumped down faster than they are naturally replenished in part of India,
China, the USA and elsewhere. And disputes over shared water resources have
led to violence and continue to raise local, national and even international
tensions.

E
At the outset of the new millennium, however, the way resource planners think
about water is beginning to change. The focus is slowly shifting back to the
provision of basic human and environmental needs as a top priority - ensuring
'some for all,' instead of 'more for some'. Some water experts are now demanding
that existing infrastructure be used in smarter ways rather than building new
facilities, which is increasingly considered the option of last, not first, resort. This
shift in philosophy has not been universally accepted, and it comes with strong
opposition from some established water organizations. Nevertheless, it may be
the only way to address successfully the pressing problems of providing
everyone with clean water to drink, adequate water to grow food and a life free
from preventable water-related illness.

F
Fortunately - and unexpectedly - the demand for water is not rising as rapidly as
some predicted. As a result, the pressure to build now water infrastructures has
diminished over the past two decades. Although population, industrial output
and economic productivity have continued to soar in developed nations, the rate
at which people withdraw water from aquifers, rivers and lacks has slowed. And
in a few parts of the world, demand has actually fallen.
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G
What explains this remarkable turn of events? Two factors: people have figured
out how to use water more efficiently, and communities are rethinking their
priorities for water use. Throughout the first three-quarters of the 20th century,
the quantity of freshwater consumed per person doubled on average; in the USA,
water withdrawals increased tenfold while the population quadrupled. But since
1980, the amount of water consumed per person has actually decreased, thanks
to a range of new technologies that help to conserve water in homes and
industry. In 1965, for instance, Japan used approximately 13 million gallons* of
water to produce $1 million of commercial output; by 1989 this had dropped to
3.5 million gallons (even accounting for inflation) - almost a quadrupling of water
productivity. In the USA, water withdrawals have fallen by more than 20% from
their peak in 1980.

H
On the other hand, dams, aqueducts and other kinds of infrastructure will still
have to be built, particularly in developing countries where basic human needs
have not been met. But such projects must be built to higher specifications and
with more accountability to local people and their environment than in the past.
And even in regions where new projects seem warranted, we must find ways to
meet demands with

fewer resources, respecting ecological criteria and to smaller budget.

Question 14 – 20

Reading passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-H

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A and C-H, from the list of headings
below

Write the correct number, I – ix, in boxes 14 – 20 on your answer sheet

List of Headings

i Scientists’ call for a revision of policy

ii An explanation for reduced water use

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Example:

Paragraph B iii

14. Paragraph A

15. Paragraph C

16. Paragraph D

17. Paragraph E

18. Paragraph F

19. Paragraph G

20. Paragraph H

Question 21-26
Do the following statement agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2:
In boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet, write
 
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
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NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

21 Water use per person is higher in the industrial world than it was in Ancient
Rome.
22 Feeding increasing populations is possible due primarily to improved
irrigation systems
23 Modern water systems imitate those of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
24 Industrial growth is increasing the overall demand for water.
25 Modern technologies have led to reduction in the domestic water
consumption.
26 In the future, governments should maintain ownership of water
infrastructures.
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The History Of The Tortoise – Reading 3

If you go back far enough, everything lived in the sea. At various points in evolutionary
history, enterprising individuals within many different animal groups moved out onto
the land, sometimes even to the most parched deserts, taking their own private
seawater with them in blood and cellular fluids. In addition to the reptiles, birds,
mammals and insects which we see all around us, other groups that have succeeded out
of water include scorpions, snails, crustaceans such as woodlice and land crabs,
millipedes and centipedes, spiders and various worms. And we mustn’t forget the
plants, without whose prior invasion of the land none of the other migrations could
have happened.

Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including
breathing and reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thoroughgoing land
animals later turned around, abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling, and
returned to the Water Seals have only gone part way back. They show us what the
intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such as whales and
dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and dugongs, with their
close cousins the manatees, ceased to be land creatures altogether and reverted to the
full marine habits of their remote ancestors. They don‘t even come ashore to breed.
They do, however, still breathe air, having never developed anything equivalent to the
gills of their earlier marine incarnation. Turtles went back to the sea a very long time
ago and, like all vertebrate returnees to the water, they breathe air. However, they are,
in one respect, less fully given back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles still
lay their eggs on beaches.

There is evidence that all modem turtles are descended from a terrestrial ancestor
which lived before most of the dinosaurs. There are two key fossils called Progaochelys
quenstedtiand Palaeochersis talampayensis dating from early dinosaur times, which
appear to be close to the ancestry of all modem turtles and tortoises. You might wonder
how we can tell whether fossil animals lived on land or in water, especially if only
fragments are found. Sometimes it`s obvious. Ichthyosarus were reptilian
contemporaries of the dinosaurs, with fins and streamlined bodies. The fossils look like
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dolphins and they surely lived like dolphins, in the water. With turtles it is a little less
obvious. One way to tell is by measuring the bones of their forelimbs.

Walter Joyce and Jacques Gauthier, at Yale University, obtained three measurements in
these particular bones of 71 species of living turtles and tortoises. They used a kind of
triangular graph paper to plot the three measurements against one another. All the land
tortoise species formed a tight cluster of points in the upper part of the triangle; all the
water turtles cluster in the lower part of the triangular graph. There was no overlap,
except when they added some species that spend time both in water and on land. Sure
enough, these amphibious species show up on the triangular graph approximately half
way between the ‘wet cluster' of sea turtles and the ‘dry cluster' of land tortoises. 'The
next step was to determine where the fossil fell. The bones of P quenstedti and P.
talampayensis leave us in no doubt. Their points on the graph are right in the thick of
the dry cluster. Both these fossils were dry-land tortoises. They come from the era
before our turtles returned to the water.

You might think, therefore, that modem land tortoises have probably stayed on land
ever since those early terrestrial times, as most mammals did after a few of them went
back to the sea. But apparently not. If you draw out the family tree of all modern turtles
and tortoises, nearly all the branches are aquatic. Today’s land tortoises constitute a
single branch, deeply nested among branches consisting of aquatic turtles. This suggests
that modern land tortoises have not stayed on land continuously since the time of P.
quenstedti and P. talampayensis. Rather, their ancestors were among those who went
back to the water, and they then re-emerged back onto the land in (relatively) more
recent times.

Tortoises therefore represent a remarkable double return. In common with all

mammals, reptiles and binds, their remote ancestors were marine fish and before that
various more or less worm-like creatures stretching back, still in the sea, to the
primeval bacteria. Later ancestors lived on land and stayed there for a very large
number of generations. Later ancestors still evolved back into the water and became sea
turtles. And finally, they returned yet again to the land as tortoises, some of which now
live in the driest of deserts.
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Questions 27-30

Answer the questions below

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer
Write your answers in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27. What had to transfer from sea to land before any animals could migrate?
28. Which TWO processes are mentioned as those in which animals had to make big
changes as they   moved onto land?
29. Which physical feature. possessed by their ancestors, do whales lack?
30. Which animals might ichthyosaurs have resembled?

Questions 31-33
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 31-33 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE    if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE    if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN    if there is no information on this more than once.
  
31.Turtles were among the first group of animals to migrate back to the sea.
32.It is always difficult to determine where an animal lived when its fossilized remains
are incomplete.
33.The habitat of ichthyosaurs can be determined by the appearance of their fossilized
remains.
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Questions 34-39
Complete the flow-chart  below

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each
answer
Write your answers in boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet.

Method of determining where the ancestors of turtles and tortoises come from
Step 1: 71 species of living turtles and tortoises were examined and a total
of 34 ................were taken from the bones of their forelimbs.
Step 2: The data was recorded on a 35 ................... (necessary for comparing the
information). Outcome: Land tortoises were represented by a dense 36 .................. of
points towards the top. Sea turtles were grouped together in the bottom part.
Step 3: The same data was collected from some living 37 .................. species and added to
the other results. Outcome: The points for these species turned out to be positioned
about 38 .................. up the triangle between the land tortoises and the sea turtles.
Step 4: Bones of R quenstedti and P talampayensis were examined in a similar way and
the results added.
Outcome: The position of the points indicated that both these ancient creatures were
39......................

Questions 40
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.
According to the writer, the most significant thing about tortoises is that

A. they are able to adapt to life in extremely dry environments.

B. their original life form was a kind of primeval bacteria,
C. they have so much in common with sea turtles.
D. they have made the transition from sea to land more than once.