VOA常速英语2007年-Farm in US Midwest Feeds Hungry, Teaches Farmin

By Faiza Elmasry
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
06 November 2007
 

An organic farm known as Growing Power and its owner, a former basketball player are on a mission. Over the past 15 years, Will Allen has developed what he calls an ecologically sound urban farm in Milwaukee, [in the Midwestern U.S. state] Wisconsin. In this story by Faiza Elmasry (voiced by Amy Katz), Allen also has sought to teach people ways to feed themselves.

Lauren Demet, a old Milwaukee resident, visits Will Allen's farm, Growing Power, once a week as a volunteer to help out and learn. She even participates in some of the chores. "Usually every time I come here, I milk a goat or two goats," she says.

Demet, 23, hopes this experience will help her run her own farm to produce cheese. She learns from Leona Nakielski, who also started as a volunteer but three years ago became a permanent worker.  

"For me, the type of work that I do here, I feel, is the type of life style I'd like to live and encourage people to live," says Nakielski.

Walking through the farm, Nakielski shows volunteers and visitors how some 20,000 vegetables are cultivated and how workers keep more than a million red wriggler¹ worms, a few hundred chickens, a family of goats, rabbits, geese and bees.

Farm owner Will Allen says fish are raised in an aquaponic system. "Aquaponic is growing plants and fish in the same system," he explains. "You have the fish down below. And you have plants above. It's a symbiotic² relationship between the plants benefiting from the fish and the fish benefiting from the plants."

And on Allen's farm there is no waste, literally³. He says, everything is recycled.  "Everything that comes in here needs to be used up in the system," he says. "So, they don't have waste going into our rivers, our streams or anywhere else."

It costs $5,000 a month to provide Growing Power, and its six huge greenhouses, with the energy to keep running. Allen hopes to cut that cost.

He is building an anaerobic⁴ digester that takes solid food waste to produce acids. Allen explains, "Those acids will go into the digester to [produce] methane⁵ gas that will run a generator⁶ to produce electricity."

Allen says Growing Power began as an organic farm producing healthy and affordable⁷ food for the local community. It has expanded to a hands-on training center where local small growers learn to farm and sell their produce.

He adds, that translates his vision for local communities to be independent from chemicals and poverty into reality.

1 wriggler   

n.扭动的人或物，孑孓

参考例句：

2 symbiotic   

adj.共栖的，共生的

参考例句：

• Racing has always had a symbiotic relationship with betting.赛马总是与赌博相挂钩。
• Engineering completely new symbiotic relationship is obviously not an imminent possibility.筹划完全新的共生关系显然是可能性不大。

3 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

4 anaerobic   

adj.厌氧的

参考例句：

• Anaerobic respiration occurs only in particularly active tissues such as muscles during severe exercise. 厌氧呼吸只有在处于剧烈运动状态的肌肉等特别活跃的组织中才会发生。
• Infection,especially anaerobic infection, is much more apt to occur.感染，特别是厌氧感染很容易发生。

5 methane   

n.甲烷，沼气

参考例句：

• The blast was caused by pockets of methane gas that ignited.爆炸是由数袋甲烷气体着火引起的。
• Methane may have extraterrestrial significance.甲烷具有星际意义。

6 generator   

n.发电机，发生器

参考例句：

• All the while the giant generator poured out its power.巨大的发电机一刻不停地发出电力。
• This is an alternating current generator.这是一台交流发电机。

7 affordable   

adj.支付得起的，不太昂贵的

参考例句：

• The rent for the four-roomed house is affordable.四居室房屋的房租付得起。
• There are few affordable apartments in big cities.在大城市中没有几所公寓是便宜的。