通过能够实时监测生猪状态的语音识别和智能传感器等技术，阿里巴巴希望能够推动*的生猪养殖水平向*水平看齐。

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Artificial intelligence is coming to the farmyard: helping ensure active pigs, lean bacon and improved crop yields.

人工智能正走进农场：帮助确保生猪的活动量，产出瘦肉培根，并提高粮食产量。

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Alibaba, the Chinese tech giant that is using artificial intelligence to help cities and its own ecommerce operation run more efficiently, is taking the same technologies — including voice recognition and smart sensors — to monitorhogs’ activity and prune costs at apple orchards.

*科技巨头阿里巴巴(Alibaba)利用人工智能来帮助城市及阿里巴巴的电商业务更加高效地运行。现在，阿里巴巴正使用同样的技术——包括语音识别和智能传感器——来监控生猪的活动，削减苹果园的成本。

“Agriculture and animal husbandry industry is a strategic sector and matters to the lives of billions across China,” said Simon Hu, president of Alibaba Cloud. The country is the world’s biggest supplier and consumer of pork.

“农牧业是战略性行业，关系到*十多亿人的生活，”阿里云(Alibaba Cloud)总裁胡晓明说。*是世界*的猪肉供应国和消费国。

① hog [hɒg] n. 猪;贪食者 vt. 拱起;多占

例句：U. S. hog producers have already been struggling financially for more than a year due to poor prices and high feed costs. 因为价格不景气，饲料价格高，美国猪生产商已经历了一年多的经济困难时期。

② prune [pruːn] v. 减少;修剪;删去 n. 梅干

例句：The Philippine government has urged the return of gems worth more than $310m, and including a Burmese ruby said to be as big as a prune. 菲律宾*已敦促将价值超过3.1亿美元的宝石归还给马科斯夫人，其中包括一颗据说大如李子的缅甸红宝石。

Screenshot: et.aliyun.com

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However, it is far from the only company bringing some of the world’s newest technologies to bear on one of its most ancient industries. Fonterra, the New Zealand-based dairy farming co-operative, is using data analytics to route its fleet of milk tankers while Salesforce, the biggest “software as a service” company, is counting more farming groups among its clients.

然而，阿里巴巴绝不是*一个把世界上一些*的技术引入世界上最古老的行业之一的企业。位于新西兰的乳品农业合作社Fonterra利用数据分析来为奶罐车队设计路线，而*的“软件即服务”公司Salesforce，正把更多的农业集团揽为自己的客户。

③ bear on 压迫;与…有关;对…有影响;瞄准

例句：His story does not bear on the question. 他的故事和这个问题无关。

Screenshot: fonterra.com

“Agtech goes from the seed in the ground all the way to the dinner table,” said Tiffani Bova, who goes by the title of innovation evangelist at Salesforce. She lists smart tractors that send an alert when a part is faulty and know at which row to switch from corn to soyabeans, through to managing the supply chain.

“人工智能科技从土地里的种子一路应用到餐桌。”蒂法妮•博瓦(Tiffani Bova)说，她在Salesforce的职位是创新宣传大使。她举出了智能拖拉机的例子，这些拖拉机能在一个部件出现故障时报警，知晓哪一排种植物从玉米换成了大豆，管理供应链。

④ evangelist [ɪ'væn(d)ʒ(ə)lɪst] n. 福音传道者;推广专员

例句：Steve Allison, a technical evangelist at Adobe, the software company, predicts significant changes in online learning. 软件公司Adobe技术专员史蒂夫-阿利森预测，在线学习将发生重大变革。

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Alibaba is using AI technologies and smart sensors to monitor each hog’s activity and state of health — data that will then be analysed and turned into a real-time report card for the pigs: more exercise for slothful ones that need to burn fat and grow more meat, say, or increasing feed for pregnantsows.

阿里巴巴正利用人工智能技术和智能传感器监测每一头生猪的日常活动和健康状态——这些数据经过分析转化为一份实时报告：比如，为那些懒散的生猪安排更多锻炼来燃烧脂肪和长肉，或者对怀孕的母猪增加饲喂量。

The technology will also be able to detect sick hogs and collect data allowing the farmer to create the optimum environment for the herd, crops ororchards.

这项技术还能监测到生病的猪，收集数据帮助农民为牲畜、粮食或者果园创造最理想的环境。

⑤ slothful ['sləʊθfʊl] adj. 懒惰的;迟钝的

例句：Designed to improve people's health, the contest saw the most slothful people transformed into the most powerful athletes. 该比赛旨在促进人们的身体健康，让人们“从懒汉变成健儿”。

⑥ sow [səʊ] v. 播种;散布 n. 母猪

例句： Tiger cubs sit in their feeding pen with a sow, who has become their surrogate mother, at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Pattaya, Thailand. 在泰国芭提雅的拉差龙虎园里，虎宝宝们与一只母猪卧在笼子里，这只母猪就是它们的临时妈妈。

⑦ orchard ['ɔːtʃəd] n. 果园;果树林

例句：Orchards should not be established in areas with high rust-incidence. 果园不应设立在锈病率发生高的地区。

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Alibaba reckons its self-styled “agricultural brain” could lead to three more piglets being born per sow and cut the newborn death rate. That would lift the pigs per sow per year to 32, bringing China in line with advanced pig-farming countries — a handy increase in supply for consumers at a time of higher tariffs on US pork.

阿里巴巴提出，其所谓的“ET农业大脑”能够让每头母猪生产的存活的小猪多3头，并且降低初生小猪的非自然死亡率。这将使母猪年均生产小猪数量提高到32，让*生猪养殖行业水平与*进的生猪养殖*的水平看齐——在美国输华猪肉的关税提高之际，这样的提升显然有益于消费者供应。

⑧ self-styled ['self'staild] adj. 自诩的，自封的

例句：So naive too was a self-styled "realism" that said post Iraq and Afghanistan Britain should avoid all overseas entanglements. 同样天真的是一种自封的“现实主义”，认为英国在经历伊拉克和阿富汗战争后，应当避免所有海外纠葛。

⑨ piglet ['pɪɡlət] n. 小猪;猪仔

例句：A giant farm dog and a tiny piglet in Germany cuddle up as if they were family after the baby pig was abandoned by its own mother. 德国的一只大型农场犬最近承担起猪妈妈的职责，收养了一只被母亲遗弃的迷你小猪崽。

⑩ handy ['hændɪ] adj. 便利的;就近的;容易取得的

例句：That kind of interpretation would be handy for relieving the church of its call to aid millions upon millions of prisoners. 这个说法为教会提供了*借口，不用负起责任去帮助千千万万的囚犯。

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Tequ Group, a Sichuan-based farm, is banking on the Alibaba technology to reach its goal of breeding 10m pigs by 2020: “a scale that no ordinary automation system could cope with, let alone a human system”, said chairman Degen Wang.

位于四川的农业集团特驱集团(Tequ Group)正利用阿里巴巴的技术，期望在2020年达到养殖1000万头猪的目标，“但现实普通的自动管理系统将无法应付如此宏大的规模，更不用说以人手操作的管理系统，”特驱集团董事长王德根说。

⑪ let alone 更不用说;放任;不打扰

例句：When Apple launched the iPad less than a year ago, most people did not know what it was for, let alone how many the company would sell. 不到一年前，当苹果推出iPad的时候，大多数人还不知道它是干什么用的，更别提预测它的销量了。

Screenshot: et.aliyun.com

Ms Bova concurred. “The biggest problem we have is there will be billions more people on the planet and how do we feed them in a sustainable way？ It’s almost impossible without tech stepping in.”

博瓦认同这一说法：“我们*的问题是，地球上还会多出数十亿人，我们该如何以一种可持续的方式来喂饱他们？没有技术的引入，这几乎是不可能实现的。”

⑫ concur [kən'kɜː] vi. 同意;一致;互助

例句：I concur it is a formidable challenge, but not so much that we cannot at least try to find ways to improve it. 我同意这是一项艰巨挑战，但也不至于让我们甚至不能做出尝试，想办法改善现状。