- ID
- 3953485
- Banca
- Prefeitura do Rio de Janeiro - RJ
- Órgão
- CDURP
- Ano
- 2012
- Provas
- Disciplina
- Inglês
- Assuntos
Read the following text and answer question based on the text
A Potential Solution: Farm Vertically
The concept of indoor farming is not new, since
hothouse production of tomatoes, a wide variety of
herbs, 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 3 billion people.
An entirely new approach to indoor farming must be
invented, employing cutting edge technologies. The
Vertical Farm must be efficient (cheap to construct and
safe to operate). Vertical farms, many stories high, will
be situated in the heart of the world’s urban centers. If
successfully implemented, they offer the promise of
urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and
varied food supply (year-round crop production), and
the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been
sacrificed for horizontal farming.
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 are protected against the elements, yet we
subject our food-bearing plants to the rigors 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 regime, that is not what
follows. Massive floods, protracted droughts, class 4-5
hurricanes, and severe monsoons take their toll each
year, destroying millions of tons of valuable crops. Don’t
our harvestable plants deserve the same level of comfort
and protection that we now enjoy? The time is at hand
for us to learn how to safely grow our food inside
environmentally controlled multistory buildings within
urban centers. If we do not, then in just another 50
years, the next 3 billion people will surely go hungry,
and the world will become a much more unpleasant
place in which to live.
(taken from http://www.verticalfarm.com/more)
The best synonym for the expression “more often than not now” (paragraph 2) in the text is: