Reading Comprehension

PT128 · S4 · P1 · Q6 New Zealand's Wool Growers

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The 50 million sheep of New Zealand outnumber its people 13 to 1, the highest such ratio in the world.

Topic

The wool industry in New Zealand

Framework

Problem/Solution

Main Point

Although the wool industry in NZ has been suffering since 1950, based on the rise of synthetic wool, it could improve its productivity by adopting the practices of the country's leading wool growers.

Summary

P1 - Intro / Description of Problem

After telling us about the glory days for NZ wool in the 1950's, we get a Purpose Pivot (but, yet, however, recently). It tells us about a drastic decline in profitability, so it looks like a good Framework could be Problem / Solution. The rest of the paragraph continues to unpack the problem.

P2 - Big Picture Solution

In this paragraph, the author rejects one Solution (raising wool prices) and says instead that we need to improve productivity, and "this goal could readily be achieved if" the NZ wool industry were to adopt the best practices of the leading wool growers.

P3 - Obstacle to Solution

This paragraph essentially continues its contention that better management could do the trick. A tension is introduced between "professional operations" (who are sympathetic to better management practices) and "family farmers" (who care more about lifestyle than maximal efficiency).

P4 - Specific Recommendation (start a genetic research company)

The author isn't talking about gene splicing, but rather just being more Darwinian by finding the superior sheep and keeping them as breeding stock.

Which one of the following principles is most clearly operative in the author's reasoning in the passage?

Correct
An industry that seeks to
Why this is right
This seems to vibe pretty well with what we were thinking. The universal/categorial language of "an industry that is X should do Y" would mean "If you're X, then you should do Y". industry seeking to should have whole increase overall ? industry adopt techniques profitability of most prod members The trigger and the outcome match language in the 2nd paragraph, where the author establishes her main point recommendation: the only reliable route to profitability lies in improving productivity ... this goal could be readily achieved if the industry as a whole were to adopt the techniques of the country's leading wool growers.
Skill tested: Principle · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
76% picked this
Increasing the overall productivity of
Out of Scope
Out of Scope: required to give aid There's nothing in this passage that involves forcing the leading members to give aid to the industry's less productive members. Sure, the author is telling the less productive members to copy the techniques of the most successful ones, but she's recommending parts of their techniques that are common knowledge, not proprietary secrets. The passage isn't ever suggesting that the leading growers need to share proprietary business practices with the fledgling growers in order to assist them.
1% picked this
Even if an industry has
Bad Evidence / Conclusion Match
This principle is about an industry that has successfully increased its productivity, but the passage is about the wool industry, whose profits have been in decline. So that half doesn't match the passage, and then the other half about "exploring new avenues for reducing costs" doesn't match anything either. Yes, reducing costs is one way to increase profitability, but the passage never talks about it. The author is talking about increasing productivity (getting more value per unit of time), which can come about other ways as well (such as using premium breeding stock so that the eventual wool can sell for a higher price).
4% picked this
An industry whose productivity is
Out of Scope: competing industries
The wool industry's profitability is declining (it doesn't say its productivity is). But the bigger problem is that the main point of the passage is the author's recommendation that the wool industry model its business practices on those of its most successful wool-makers. This is saying "model your business practices on a competing industry." The passage wasn't saying, "The wool industry to copy the cotton industry's business practices". It was saying, "The wool industry can achieve the same boost in productivity that the cotton growers achieved, if the wool industry models its business practices on the most successful wool-growers."
18% picked this
If an industry's productivity is
Opposite Conclusion
The trigger here potentially applies to the wool industry (we know at least that profitability is declining). But the outcome is saying that the wool industry should go back to the practices they employed in their heyday. The actual advice the author had was that the wool industry should "adopt the management and breeding practices of the country's leading wool growers". The wool industry by enlarge is probably still using the practices it employed at its 1950s apex. The problem is that synthetics have since been invented and driven down the price of clean strong wool. In order to compete with synthetics, the author thinks the industry needs to change / modernize its techniques.
1% picked this

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