Question

A New Way To Grow Food
Life Science Studies: Structure, Function, and Organic Processes

Picture a farm where the sun never shines, rainfall is irrelevant, and the climate is always temperate. It may be hard to imagine because most people think that crops must be grown outdoors on arable land in unpredictable weather conditions; however, research that began in the Netherlands has proven that the artifice for obtaining the perfect crop field is to place it inside a windowless building with carefully controlled conditions. Crops can be grown in a New York City skyscraper or a sprawling mall in the Saudi desert. Advocates say these innovative indoor farms are part of the solution to the world's food shortage dilemma.

Hunger Around the World

Today's engineers must find new methods for producing crops because of the world's difficulty in feeding its burgeoning population. Of the nearly 8 billion people living on Earth, 56 percent of whom live in cities, about 1 billion are hungry or malnourished. Hunger and malnutrition pose onerous threats to health worldwide, with 45 percent of child deaths due to hunger and related causes.

The high cost of food is partly to blame, and prices continue to soar as a result of rising costs for the energy required to plant, fertilize, harvest, and transport crops. Experts project that prices will become more unstable with the worsening effects of climate change, which is caused primarily by carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. This gradual change in the planet's climate can disrupt agrarian practices. For example, long-term crop planning becomes difficult for farmers due to droughts, floods, and other unpredictable fluctuations in the weather, and when bad weather yields smaller crops, consumers see a resulting increase in food prices.

As these challenges grow, so does the world's population—the United Nations predicts that by midcentury, the global population will increase to 9.7 billion. Feeding so many people may require expanding farmland at the expense of forests and wilderness or dramatically boosting crop yields on existing farmland.

"In order to keep a planet that's worth living on, we have to change our methods," says Gertjan Meeuws, cofounder of Plantlab and Seven Steps to Heaven, companies that develop and apply controlled environment solutions in plant breeding, propagating, and growing.

A New Way to Grow Food

In 2005, Meeuws and three other pioneering Dutch bioengineers found one such method, initiating a prototype of an indoor farm based on mathematics that explains and predicts plant growth. They took the concept of a greenhouse one step further, growing vegetables, herbs, and other plants in an enclosed and regulated environment using only specific wavelengths of light.

In the research station, strawberries, yellow peppers, basil, and banana plants took on an eerie pink glow under red and blue bulbs of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. While LED bulbs were expensive, the bulbs used far less energy than traditional light sources. The researchers also observed that the plants consumed about 90 percent less water than is required for outdoor agriculture; the water trickled into pans as needed, and all excess water was recycled.

The researchers found that when light, water, and other natural elements were manipulated, the plants adjusted by becoming more efficient, requiring less energy to grow. After more than two decades of tinkering with different combinations of light, soil, and temperature on multifarious plants, the growth rate for the indoor crops was three times faster than under conventional greenhouse conditions, with no pesticidal chemicals.

"We can change temperature, carbon dioxide levels, or humidity," Meeuws says. "We can even influence how products taste…by playing with light and climate."

Today, indoor farms can be found all over the globe—including Kuwait, Japan, Germany, and the United States—with more being built every year. Worldwide, countries are coming to understand the ecological benefits of this agricultural technology that addresses three critical issues: food security, food safety, and water shortage.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Question 6


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The article states:

Today's engineers must find new methods for producing crops because of the world's difficulty in feeding its burgeoning population. Of the nearly 8 billion people living on Earth, 56 percent of whom live in cities, about 1 billion are hungry or malnourished.

Which is the closest antonym for the word burgeoning?


plummeting
resilient
skyrocketing
tangible

Answer 1

plummeting

"Bur­geoning" means growing or expanding rapidly; "plummeting" is the closest antonym, meaning falling or decreasing sharply.