Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Hard

PT139 S3 P1 Q7 Explanation

Improving Farm Economics

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TopicsInferenceSociety

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Passage

The prevailing trend in agriculture toward massive and highly mechanized production, with its heavy dependence on debt and credit as a means of raising capital, has been linked to the growing problem of bankruptcy among small farms. African American horticulturalist Booker T. Whatley has proposed a comprehensive approach to small farming that believes will bring about such profitability when combined with smart management and hard work.

Whatley emphasizes that small farms must generate year-round cash flow. To this end, he recommends growing at least ten different crops, which would alleviate financial problems should one crop fail completely. To minimize the need to seek hard-to-obtain loans, the market for the farm products should be developed via a “clientele membership crops that clients ask for, and to comply with client requests regarding the use of chemicals.

Whatley stresses that this “pick-your-own” farming is crucial for profitability because 50 percent of a farmer’s production cost is tied up with harvesting, and using clients as harvesters allows the farmer to charge 60 percent of what supermarkets charge and still operate the farm at a profit. Whatley’s plan also affords farmers needed. The CMC would consist primarily of people from metropolitan areas who value fresh produce.

The success of this plan, Whatley cautions, depends in large part on a farm’s location: the farm should be situated on a hard-surfaced road within 40 miles of a population center of at least 50,000 people, as studies suggest that people are less inclined to travel any greater distances for food. In alternative to sprawling corporate farms while providing top-quality agricultural goods to consumers in most urban areas.

What this question is testing

Inference

Your task

Find what must be true based on what the passage or stimulus states.

Common trap

Answers that are plausible or likely but not actually guaranteed by the text.

Winning move

Keep only the choice the statements fully support — eliminate anything that requires an extra assumption.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
7.

Which one of the following inferences is most supported by the information

Answer choices

  1. Too Strong: guarantees16% picked this

    The advance payment to the farmer by CMC members guarantees that members will get the

    Nothing is guaranteed in the farming game. You could have a bitter winter frost or a crop disease where no one gets any of the promised crop.

  2. Correct62% picked this

    Hard-surfaced roads are traditionally the means by which some farmers transport their produce to their

    Why this is right

    In the final paragraph, we hear that “In this way, Whatley reverses the traditional view of hard-surfaced roads as farm-to-market roads, calling them instead “city-to-farm” roads”. This sentence is saying, “Whereas traditionally farmers have driven their crops from the farm to the markets spread throughout the cities, in this pick-your-own-produce model, the customers will drive from the cities to the farms.” So it implies, that some farmers have traditionally used hard-roads to get their crops to customers.

    Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  3. Too Strong: typical / should15% picked this

    A typical population center of 50,000 should be able to support CMCs on at least

    This is saying that most population centers of 50,000 should be able to support 25-acre CMC’s. We have no evidence for that big claim. What if most population centers of 50,000 people are located in climates too cold or dry to farm? Whatley mentioned 25-acres at one point as a random, arbitrary example number. And Whatley is recommending that these farms be within 40 miles of a 50,000 population center. If you’re trying to start a 25-acre farm, and all of the cities within 40 miles of you have less than 50,000 people then you probably shouldn’t start the farm there. But that doesn’t mean that most 50,000 cities are good contenders for small farms, that they “should be able to support 25-acre farms”.

  4. Out of Scope: consumers’ preferences5% picked this

    Consumers prefer hard-surfaced roads to other roads because the former cause less wear and tear

    This answer is very plausible in a real-world sense, but we don’t have any support for the idea that consumers prefer hard-surfaced roads over dirt roads, so we certainly don’t know why they prefer hard-surfaced roads. We only know that they prefer traveling 40 miles or less to buy their food.

  5. Too Strong: most / primarily3% picked this

    Most roads with hard surfaces were originally given these surfaces primarily for the

    We can’t generalize about what’s true of more than 50% of hard surfaced roads. We have no idea if farmers were the primary inspiration for most hard surfaced roads. We haven’t heard anything about the backstory of hard-surfaced roads.

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