VOA标准英语2012--Irrigation Pioneer Wins World Food Prize
时间：2019-01-14 作者：英语课 分类：VOA标准英语2012年(十月)
Irrigation Pioneer Wins World Food Prize
Hillel’s orchards 1 near his home in Israel are innovation in action.
Each tree row is fed by plastic tubes which drip water at the base of the tree.
Irrigating 2 drop by drop - called drip irrigation - has transformed agriculture by dramatically reducing the amount of water needed.
Farmers now rely on it in water-scarce regions from Spanish vineyards, to African onion fields, to America’s fruit and salad bowl.
“We in California grow about 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables of the continental 3 United States," says University of California at Davis hydrologist Jan Hopmans. "And the reason that is possible is because of, indeed, these drip and micro-irrigation techniques.”
Hillel got his start in dryland farming as a pioneer in Israel’s Negev Desert in the 1950s.
"The issue was efficient use of water," he says, "because land is available. It’s extensive. Water is limited.”
These desert farmers did not have the luxury of running irrigation water through channels to their crops, the way farmers have since ancient times.
So Hillel and others gave plants just what they needed, just where they needed it.
“The idea was to apply the water little by little, the way you spoon-feed a baby,” Hillel says.
It worked so well that Hillel was soon traveling the world, showing others how to do it.
Experts say drip irrigation is an innovation whose importance is growing, as climate change and rising population strain water supplies in many parts of the world.
“This is where water use, water availability, water-use efficiency and climate change and crop production all converge," Hillel says. "And this has been really the essence of my career.”
A career whose legacy 4 can be measured drop by drop.
- They turned the hills into orchards and plains into granaries. 他们把山坡变成了果园，把平地变成了粮仓。
- Some of the new planted apple orchards have also begun to bear. 有些新开的苹果园也开始结苹果了。
- Derrick and I have been laying out the system of irrigating ditches. 德里克跟我在一起修建那个灌溉网。
- He had been in command at the irrigating ditch the day before. 上一天，在灌溉渠边，是他担任指挥的。
- A continental climate is different from an insular one.大陆性气候不同于岛屿气候。
- The most ancient parts of the continental crust are 4000 million years old.大陆地壳最古老的部分有40亿年历史。