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4Dutch Experiment Grows Vegetables in Sea Water Climate change has caused a rise in sea levels. This has increased the amount of salt in fresh water used on coastal farms. As a result, farmers are increasingly unable to use fields close to the sea. Scientists call this process salinization. The term comes from the word saline -- which means a mixture of salt and water. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says salinization is reducing the worlds irrigated lands by 1 to 2 percent every year. Irrigation is the process of supplying land with fresh water from other areas. But a farmer in the Netherlands is now using a mixture of sea and fresh water to grow healthy and tasty vegetables. Marc Van Rijsselberghe started with an experiment. He put several kinds of plants in saline. We put in a lot of plants in the fields and then we put in, put them in fresh water and in sea water and all the varieties between it, and then we see which variety is surviving and which variety is dying. Mr. Van Rijsselberghe worked on the project with scientists from the Free University of Amsterdam. He divided a farm into eight irrigated areas. Separate pipes pumped fresh and sea water, and a computer program created water with eight levels of salinity. And then computer says ‘go and then it goes to the fields and dripping irrigation starts to work and we are going to kill plants. Thats it. Computerized measuring devices called sensors controlled the water levels and the levels of salinity. Mr. Van Rijsselberghe says he was able to harvest vegetables from most of the eight test areas. He says the vegetables were smaller than those grown in fresh water. But he says they also have more sugar and salt, so they taste better. Its a miracle. I mean, it shouldnt be a carrot, it should be dying if we look at the datum that are available in the world at the moment. The farmer grew carrots, cabbage, onions and beetroot. But he found that potatoes grew better than the other vegetables in