Cambridge 18 Reading Test 1 - Answers With Explanation

1. "From identical vertical tubes nearby burst row upon row of lettuces" — the tubes described just before this are the strawberry towers.

2. "20 staff will harvest up to 1,000 kg of perhaps 35 different varieties of fruit and vegetables, every day."

3. Hardy says there's "no reason why you shouldn't eventually target maybe between 5% and 10% of consumption."

4. "Most of the fruit and vegetables we eat have been treated with something like 17 different pesticides."

5. Traditional varieties are "selected for their capacity to withstand such substantial journeys" after travelling long distances.

6. "80% of the price I pay goes to wholesalers and transport companies, not the producers."

7. "You can select crop varieties for their flavour, not their resistance to the transport and storage chain."

8. The passage covers a rooftop farm as well as "strawberries... grown in disused shipping containers, mushrooms in underground carparks" — both above and below ground — TRUE.

9. The passage describes the tubes and trays used, but never says whether any of this equipment can be made by hand — NOT GIVEN.

10. "It is cheap to run, too, consuming a tiny fraction of the electricity used by some techniques" — less electricity, not more — FALSE.

11. Aeroponic produce sells at prices "generally higher than those of classic intensive agriculture," but "lower than soil-based organic growers" — TRUE.

12. "Much of the produce is suited to the summer months" — not most produce, all year round — FALSE.

13. Hardy says beans "tend to take up a lot of space for not much return," but nothing is said about how long they take to grow compared with other crops — NOT GIVEN.

14. Paragraph B: focusing only on timber value through "high-grading" left behind trees that "compete for growth with higher-value trees, shade out desirable regeneration and decrease the health of a stand."

15. Paragraph A: "a tree's 'value' depends on several factors including its species, size, form, condition, quality, function, and accessibility."

16. Paragraph C: low-use wood "can even be made into liquid fuels like ethanol and gasoline for lorries and cars."

17. Paragraph E lists pests including "hemlock wooly adelgid, Asian longhorned beetle, emerald ash borer, and gypsy moth."

18. Paragraph B: "Some people even call these 'junk trees.'"

19. A Salvage Cut "reduce[s] the number of sick trees and seek[s] to manage the future spread of a pest problem."

20. A Shelterwood Cut "can also be used to develop a two-tier forest so that there are two harvests and the money that comes in is spread out over a decade or more."

21. A Shelterwood Cut "leaves a young forest where all trees are at a similar point in their growth."

22. "Thinnings and dense and dead wood removal for fire prevention also centre on the production of low-use wood."

23. "The tops of trees that have been cut down should be left on the site so that their nutrients cycle back into the soil."

24. "Trees with many cavities are extremely important habitats for insect predators like woodpeckers, bats and small mammals."

25. "Not all small trees are low-use. For example, many species like hawthorn provide food for wildlife."

26. "Rare species of trees in a forest should also stay behind as they add to its structural diversity."

27. The passage describes "companies, governments and other players in space... collaborating in new ways to avoid a shared threat," through groups like the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee.

28. Moriba Jah explains his own goal: "I want to make space a place that is safe to operate, that is free and useful for generations to come."

29. "A US commercial Iridium satellite smashed into an inactive Russian communications satellite called Cosmos-2251, creating thousands of new pieces of space shrapnel" — a specific past collision.

30. The field "is called space traffic management, because it's similar to managing traffic on the roads or in the air," with a detailed comparison to how precisely air-traffic controllers track planes.

31. "Some researchers are... developing taxonomies of space debris — working on measuring properties such as the shape and size of an object" to classify what's in orbit.

32. "International groups... have developed guidelines on space sustainability."

33. Guidelines include "inactivating satellites at the end of their useful life by venting pressurised materials or leftover fuel."

34. The vented fuel is material "that might lead to explosions."

35. Krag asks: "What happens to those that fail or go bankrupt? They are probably not going to spend money to remove their satellites from space."

36. Marlon Sorge: "'If you knew precisely where everything was, you would almost never have a problem.'"

37. Moriba Jah describes himself as a space environmentalist who wants space "free and useful for generations to come" — available to everyone, now and later.

38. "Only about half of all missions have abided by this 25-year goal, says Holger Krag" — the deorbiting recommendation is widely ignored.

39. Jah's database shows "the US and Russian sources contain two completely different orbits for the same object," and he says "it is almost impossible to tell which is correct."

40. Carolin Frueh warns: "'If we go on like this, we will reach a point of no return.'"