The idea of growing food in a desert would make most people laugh but this is quickly becoming a reality. There are currently two desert farms in the world where quality vegetables are being planted cheaply and easily.

Sundrop Farms, based in South Australia, uses experimental greenhouses to grow tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. The biggest challenge of growing food in a desert, obviously, is the lack of available water. The researchers at Sundrop Farms have gotten around this problem by using the sun to desalinate（淡化）sea water. It can also be used to control the temperature of the greenhouses.

Without depending on limited resources such as land and fresh water, Sundrop Farms has made farming a practice. This can increase the world’s food supplies. Another benefit of this kind of farming is that it can be done anywhere, thus reducing the costs of transporting food to distant locations. Yet another benefit is that it reduces the need for pesticides（杀虫剂）.

Another experimental desert farm is the Sahara Forest Project, which began in Qatar in December 2012. Greenhouses in the farm are cooled by saltwater. Solar power and other technologies are used together to help make vegetation（植被）grow in the desert environment. As deserts have expanded over recent years around the world due to global warming, this project could solve the problem.

The result form the Qatar project were better than expected and in June of 2014, Jordan agreed to host another one. This will be much bigger than the Qatar project and the project members will have even more opportunities to test their experiments on a much larger scale. It is not clear yet that desert farming represents the future of farming but these projects have shown some success in the field.

【小题1】What does “this problem” in paragraph 2 refer to?

A．Sea water is hard to purify.

B．The desert is short of water.

C．The temperature is high in the desert.

D．Desert farms aren’t fit to plant vegetables.

【小题2】What is one of the characters of desert farming?

A．It needs more pesticides.	B．It saves delivery costs.
C．It has a location limit.	D．It solves food waste problems.

【小题3】What can we know about the Sabara Forest Project?

A．It lives up to expectations.

B．It can help produce more food.

C．It is started to prevent global warming.

D．It uses technology to produce saltwater.

【小题4】What can be inferred about desert farming from the last paragraph?

A．It still has problems to solve.

B．It represents the future of farming.

C．Its early success has aroused interest in it.

D．Its aim is to create more job opportunities.