PrepTest 113, Section 4, Question 5
After 1950, in response to record growth in(46 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(13 more words not shown)
- ASince 1985 the(25 more words not shown)
- BSeveral varieties of(20 more words not shown)
- CBetween 1950 and(14 more words not shown)
- DAfter fertilizer has(21 more words not shown)
- EBetween 1975 and(20 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The farmers want more food. Why use less of something that helped them grow it?
I'm willing to accept the earlier benefit: increased fertilizer use helped more than double farmland productivity. We could still ask about pollution or other possible costs, but the passage hasn't established those problems. The immediate puzzle is that farmers continue seeking higher productivity while total fertilizer use falls.
What we’re looking for
Maybe the fertilizer has become more efficient, so a smaller amount does the job. Or perhaps another technology now helps farmers grow more without relying as heavily on fertilizer. Those are the possibilities I'd investigate. For this explanation question, we need a reason declining fertilizer use can fit with the continuing effort to increase output. We aren't told that output itself declined.
Working the answers
- A
Population growing faster than new farmland could make higher productivity more important. It doesn't explain why farmers would use less fertilizer to pursue it. Also, the reported drop is in worldwide fertilizer use, not fertilizer per person. An increase in the population could change a per-person figure without explaining a decline in the total amount used.
- B
The newly popular crops respond just as well to fertilizer as the traditional crops. That doesn't give farmers a new reason to use less. If the new crops needed less fertilizer to produce the desired results, that might help explain the change. Equal responsiveness doesn't supply that difference.
- C
This concerns the earlier period, when fertilizer use and productivity rose. The passage already gives us that broad success. We need to explain the subsequent decline in fertilizer use despite the continued aim of increasing productivity. More detail about the earlier gains doesn't tell us why the later behavior changed.
- DCorrect
This gives a different reason from my initial guesses: after years of fertilizing the soil, further applications add little to crop production. Farmers could still want greater output while seeing little benefit from continuing to apply as much fertilizer.
The earlier success and later reduction now fit together. Fertilizer was useful for raising productivity, but that doesn't mean each additional application remains equally useful indefinitely. We don't have to know the soil chemistry that produces this pattern. Nor does D say fertilizer is now useless everywhere. A reduced benefit from further applications gives us a reason for overall use to fall without farmers abandoning their aim.
- E
This could help explain a temporary disruption between 1975 and 1980. The decline we need to explain is between 1985 and the present. We aren't told that those earlier disputes continued or produced the later reduction. The dates matter: an earlier temporary price increase doesn't account for a change in the later period.
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