Test 1

PART 1 Questions 1-10

Complete the notes below.

Write ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

Transport survey
Name: Sadie Jones
Year of birth:
Postcode:

Travelling by bus
Date of bus journey:
Reason for trip: shopping and visit to the 3
Travelled by bus because cost of too high
Got on bus at
Complaints about bus service: - bus today was 6
- frequency of buses in the 7

Travelling by car
Goes to the

Travelling by bicycle
Dislikes travelling by bike in the city centre because of the 9
Doesn’t own a bike because of a lack of 10

10 =/@ p.119] |Z p. 99]

 Listening

PART 4 Questions 31-40

Complete the notes below.

Write ONE WORD ONLY for each answer.

Elephant translocation
Reasons for overpopulation at Majete National Park
e __ strict enforcement of anti-poaching laws

e successful breeding

Problems caused by elephant overpopulation

e greater competition, causing hunger for elephants
e damage to 31 in the park

The translocation process

a suitable group of elephants from the same 32
selected
vets and park staff made use of 33
elephants into an open plain
elephants were immobilised with tranquilisers
this process had to be completed quickly to reduce 34
elephants had to be turned on their 35
to their lungs
elephants’ 36 had to be monitored constantly
tracking devices were fitted to the matriarchs
data including the size of their tusks and 37 was taken
e elephants were taken by truck to their new reserve

Advantages of translocation at Nkhotakota Wildlife Park

opportunities
a reduction in the number of poachers and 39
an example of conservation that other parks can follow
an increase in 40 as a contributor to GDP

> [Spi]
[Ep 107) 1s
Test 1

READING

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

Urban farming
In Paris, urban farmers are trying a soil-free approach to agriculture that uses less
space and fewer resources. Could it help cities face the threats to our food supplies?

On top of a striking new exhibition hall in southern Paris, the world’s largest urban rooftop farm
has started to bear fruit. Strawberries that are small, intensely flavoured and resplendently red
sprout abundantly from large plastic tubes. Peer inside and you see the tubes are completely
hollow, the roots of dozens of strawberry plants dangling down inside them. From identical
vertical tubes nearby burst row upon row of lettuces; near those are aromatic herbs, such as basil,
sage and peppermint. Opposite, in narrow, horizontal trays packed not with soil but with coconut
fibre, grow cherry tomatoes, shiny aubergines and brightly coloured chards.

Pascal Hardy, an engineer and sustainable development consultant, began experimenting with
vertical farming and aeroponic growing towers — as the soil-free plastic tubes are known — on
his Paris apartment block roof five years ago. The urban rooftop space above the exhibition hall
is somewhat bigger: 14,000 square metres and almost exactly the size of a couple of football
pitches. Already, the team of young urban farmers who tend it have picked, in one day, 3,000
lettuces and 150 punnets of strawberries. When the remaining two thirds of the vast open area
are in production, 20 staff will harvest up to 1,000 kg of perhaps 35 different varieties of fruit
and vegetables, every day. ‘We’re not ever, obviously, going to feed the whole city this way,’
cautions Hardy. ‘In the urban environment you’re working with very significant practical
constraints, clearly, on what you can do and where. But if enough unused space can be developed
like this, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t eventually target maybe between 5% and 10%
of consumption.’

Perhaps most significantly, however, this is a real-life showcase for the work of Hardy’s
flourishing urban agriculture consultancy, Agripolis, which is currently fielding enquiries from
around the world to design, build and equip a new breed of soil-free inner-city farm. ‘The
method’s advantages are many,’ he says. ‘First, I don’t much like the fact that most of the fruit
and vegetables we eat have been treated with something like 17 different pesticides, or that
the intensive farming techniques that produced them are such huge generators of greenhouse

16
 Reading

gases. I don’t much like the fact, either, that they’ve travelled an average of 2,000 refrigerated
kilometres to my plate, that their quality is so poor, because the varieties are selected for their
capacity to withstand such substantial journeys, or that 80% of the price I pay goes to wholesalers
and transport companies, not the producers.’

' Produce grown using this soil-free method, on the other hand — which relies solely on a small
quantity of water, enriched with organic nutrients, pumped around a closed circuit of pipes,
towers and trays — is ‘produced up here, and sold locally, just down there. It barely travels at all,’
Hardy says. “You can select crop varieties for their flavour, not their resistance to the transport
and storage chain, and you can pick them when they’re really at their best, and not before.’ No
soil is exhausted, and the water that gently showers the plants’ roots every 12 minutes is recycled,
so the method uses 90% less water than a classic intensive farm for the same yield.

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.

17
Test 1

Questions 1-3

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS ANDIOR A NUMBER from the passage for
each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

Urban farming in Paris

1 Vertical tubes are USed to Grow StrAWDEITIES, .......seccececeeteneeenereennseee and herbs.
2 There will eventually be a daily harvest Of AS MUCH AS essences in
weight of fruit and vegetables.

3. It may be possible that the farm’s produce will account for as much as 10% of
ye overall.

Questions 4—7

Complete the table below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 4-7 on your answer sheet.

intensive farming versus aeroponic urban farming

pTGrowth | __—Selection Sale

NOt GOOD |e nmm
Goao n
nnnte
ennnven
osha
farm ing | + 4Se
e t
ernmen
© wal enetyset
quali out
and vegetables of overall income
e techniques chosen that can
pollute air survive long

Aeroponic no soil used produce chosen

urban farming because of its
|, nutrients added
to water, which is
recycled

18
 Reading

Questions 8-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 813 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN _if there is no information on this

8 Urban farming can take place above or below ground.

9 Some of the equipment used in aeroponic farming can be made by hand.

10 Urban farming relies more on electricity than some other types of farming.
11 Fruit and vegetables grown on an aeroponic urban farm are cheaper than
traditionally grown organic produce.

12 Most produce can be grown on an aeroponic urban farm at any time of the year.
13 Beans take longer to grow on an urban farm than other vegetables.

[Bp] 19