PrepTest 156, Section 1, Question 6
Because most agricultural practices in North America produce(438 more words not shown)
According to the passage, which(19 more words not shown)
- ANorth American farmers(10 more words not shown)
- BThe loss of(16 more words not shown)
- CAgricultural researchers have(15 more words not shown)
- DHeirloom crop varieties(13 more words not shown)
- EThere are fewer(10 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Follow the chain in the last paragraph. The world market encourages income-generating work; fewer people maintain small farms and heirloom crops; community networks that exchange seeds and knowledge break down. That chain explains why the stock is dwindling.
What we’re looking for
Our first prediction might be market pressure. An answer can also name a later link in the same chain: fewer farmers maintaining the plants and passing on the knowledge needed to grow them.
Working the answers
- A
Many farmers have switched, but “exclusively” claims a complete shift that the author doesn't describe. The continued existence of household heirloom stocks is part of the account.
- B
Pests and disease explain why a narrow genetic base is dangerous. The decline in heirloom stocks is instead explained through changes in farming and exchange networks. B transfers the opening problem into a different causal account.
- C
The text doesn't say researchers rejected heirlooms as unviable because of low yields. Their earlier failure to recognize the knowledge is not this asserted judgment about crop viability.
- D
We aren't told that heirlooms are too difficult to adapt to large-scale production. The explanation concerns economic incentives and the loss of small farmers and networks, not a demonstrated technical inability to grow them at scale.
- ECorrect
Fewer people planting the crops means fewer people maintaining the seed stocks. Fewer people passing along the methods also weakens the knowledge system that sustains cultivation. This is the later part of the market-pressure chain, so it fits even though it doesn't name the first cause we predicted.
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