| Plant |
November 8, 2018
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| He was in a neighborhood supermarket and was shopping around. He lived alone and needed ingredients to cook for dinner. He picked up a cabbage and looked at the price, it was 3 dollars. "Three dollars!" He clicked his tongue. Cabbages are the most basic vegetables. He had been eating cabbages since he was a kid. They were not different in shape and taste from the old days. Like eggs and bananas, but eggs and bananas are always cheap. Now there are some new vegetables introduced from overseas, but most people use common vegetables mainly because they are familiar with them. People know how to cook with them and people never get bored of their taste, and the vegetables are not expensive. Other typical vegetables that people often use are onions, potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, green peppers, spinach, radishes, eggplants, peas, pumpkins, leeks, and tomatoes. "Why are cabbages this expensive?" he sighed, and started to think. There were many typhoons that hit this country, and strong winds and heavy rains sometimes affected crops. He was not an expert of agriculture, but he could guess about cabbages' disadvantage to grow. Cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, green peppers grow on stalks. That means many vegetables grow on the same stalk, farmers  can grow a lot of each vegetable on a limited amount of space. And because of this, farmers can invest in greenhouses for them. However, cabbages seem to occupy land inefficiently. In addition, if they were like lettuce, they could grow fast and would be light so transportation costs would be cheaper, but cabbages are heavy and take more time to grow. After all, he gave up buying a cabbage. That night, he was eating cream stew that he had made. He had put in carrots, onions, broccoli, mushrooms, and pork. It was not bad, but he felt somehow unsatisfied. He usually put cabbage in his stew. He missed it. He ate tomato salad. Tomatoes were rather sweeter than previously, he thought. He had heard about a technology of cross-breeding. Crossing a sweet tomato and a disease-free tomato makes a sweet and disease resistant tomato. Crossing a tough tomato and a prolific tomato makes a tough prolific tomato. Crossing these two tomatoes makes a sweet, disease resistant, tough, prolific tomato. It usually takes a decade but in this AI computer society it would be made shorter ... He was shopping at a supermarket. He looked at the cabbage corner and saw no cabbage remaining. "There might be many rich people who can afford those pricey cabbages," he thought. He saw some vegetables he had never seen. "What is this?" He said out loud. It was a big bean sheath. The diameter was about 30 cm or so. One bean inside seemed to be as big as an egg. In this case, he could make bean soup from only one sheath. "But how were these made? These are like beans of 'Jack and the Giant Bean Stalk'." A clerk listening to him talking to himself said, "Do you want to see our green house? It's not far from here. We can walk there." He was curious and said yes. They soon came to three glass greenhouses. He wondered why he didn't notice the existence of these before. The clerk led him into one of them. It was about three stories high. There were many 'Jack and the Giant Bean Stalk' plants. The clerk said, "AI computers calculated the best condition to grow and best way of cross-breeding." He was very amazed looking up at the huge stalks. The clerk led him to the next greenhouse. He was shocked again. They were many cabbages, but there were not growing on the ground, but rather, on branches of trees. "In this method we can make more cabbages without the risk of bad weather." He couldn't believe he was looking at cabbage trees. The clerk led him to the next green house. This time he used a key to open the door. Maybe they had some secret vegetables growing in it. This time there were huge tropical looking plants. The clerk said, "These are a test version. This is a radical idea. What do you think is the difference between plants and animals?" He thought a little bit and replied, "Maybe we animals move but plants don't move. And vegetables get nutrition from their roots." The clerk smiled and said, "That's right. But AI computers have enabled some other methods." The clerk got a dove from somewhere and threw it in the air, the dove started to fly. Suddenly some of the branches from one of the plants moved fast and caught the dove, and carried it to the plant's trunk area. Surprisingly, the trunk opened up. It had a mouth! And the poor dove was swallowed into it. He was too shocked to say anything. The clerk said, "This is a revolution. Maybe in the near future there will be walking plants. Then plants can find their food by themselves and they won't need ground to ..." He noticed that the clerk's voice seemed to be further away. He looked away from the tree and saw the clerk at the door. The clerk exited the greenhouse and shut the door behind him. He heard a locking sound. He looked back at the tree and saw the branches coming toward him ... He woke up. It was a dream. He had to say that expensive cabbages caused by bad weather were better than cabbages grow from trees. |
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*leek :ネギ
*crop :作物、生産高
*prolific :多産の
*pricey :高価な
*out loud :声に出して言う
*sheath :さや