Cambridge IELTS 18 Academic Reading Test 1 (Questions 08-13)

Urban farming is not, of course, a new phenomenon. Inner-city agriculture is booming from Shanghai to Detroit and Tokyo to Bangkok. Strawberries are being grown in disused shipping containers, mushrooms in underground carparks. Aeroponic farming, he says, is ‘virtuous’. The equipment weighs little, can be installed on almost any flat surface and is cheap to buy: roughly €100 to €150 per square metre. It is cheap to run, too, consuming a tiny fraction of the electricity used by some techniques.

Produce grown this way typically sells at prices that, while generally higher than those of classic intensive agriculture, are lower than soil-based organic growers. There are limits to what farmers can grow this way, of course, and much of the produce is suited to the summer months. ‘Root vegetables we cannot do, at least not yet,’ he says. ‘Radishes are OK, but carrots, potatoes, that kind of thing- the roots are simply too long. Fruit trees are obviously not an option. And beans tend to take up a lot of space for not much return.’ Nevertheless, urban farming of the kind being practised in Paris is one part of a bigger and fast-changing picture that is bringing food production closer to our lives.