RC Question 5 Explanation
DISCUSSION: For this type of question, you should try to justify your answer using specific lines from the passage.
If you do this consistently, you can go from ‘sort of sure’ to 100% sure, every time.
You’ll get faster at it, too.
___________
- The passage never said much about corporate farms, or whether they need loans.
- The passage never mentions charging higher prices. The passage also doesn’t talk about long run profits. Mainly, Whatley’s recommendations serve to avoid debt. This answer uses plausible terms in ways never used by the passage. It’s a misleading trap.
- The passage doesn’t say what kind of consumer would join a CMC,
- CORRECT. The first sentence of paragraph 2 recommends growing at least 10 different crops, to minimize the risk of crop failure. And the last sentence of paragraph 2 says to grow only crops that clients ask for. So if customers ask for less than 10 crops, then either the farm will grow crops that clients didn’t ask for, or the farmer will risk crop failure by growing less than 10 crops.
- The third paragraph implies there are no distribution costs. Customers harvest the crops themselves, at the farm.
Hi Yasmin,
In this case, both (B) and (C) are tricky answers, but they are clear reasons that neither has the most support from the passage.
(B) suggests that farms could charge what supermarkets charge, and see higher profits in the long run. The passage states (in lines 30-31) that farmers could charge up to 60% of what supermarkets charge and still see a profit. We cannot infer that increasing the price will mean higher profits – increasing the price to supermarket levels might drive away customers.
(C) says that rural consumers are less inclined to join a CMC than those in metropolitan areas. There’s nothing to suggest that people in rural areas would be less interested in joining a CMC, there are just fewer people in rural areas overall, and therefore they are less important to the success of the CMC. The farms need to be close to a city (lines 39-41) simply because cities offer a large consumer base in a dense area – that’s also why the CMC would consist primarily of people in cities; there are simply more people in metropolitan areas. It has nothing to do with how inclined consumers in rural areas would be to participate.
There’s also no reason to infer that a farm would have more than one CMC. That wouldn’t make sense – the clientele membership club is just a group of individual customers harvesting directly at that farm. Even if they were all also harvesting at a different farm, that would be a different CMC, because they would be a different farm’s clientele.
(D) simply states that if the CMC asks the farm to grow less than ten crops, either the farm will grow less than ten crops, or the farm will not grow exactly what the CMC asked for. Either way, one of Whatley’s recommendations won’t be followed. It’s definitely the answer choice most clearly supported by what’s in the passage.
Hope that helps!
I’m glad that question was asked. I also read the “municipality” line to mean rural wouldn’t join. Now I understand it’s because of the numbers. Rural guys can still join, but they’re less important to the success of the farm because there would only be a few people from that group.
For (C) – the passage does say what kind of people would join a CMC. In line 36, it says ‘the CMC would consist primarily of people from metropolitan areas who value fresh produce’. From this, it is surely reasonable to infer that people from rural areas are generally less inclined than those who live in metropolitan areas to join a CMC – why else would the CMC consist primarily of people from metropolitan areas (who will even have added comparative disadvantage of having to travel to the rural area where the farm is located)?
I don’t see how this is a bigger logical jump than the one required by (D)- which assumes that each farm can only be in a single CMC, which is not stated anywhere in the passage. Without this assumption, you can have a situation where a farm is growing fewer than ten crops for a CMC, and several other crops for a different CMC – and still have be growing ten or more crops.
Even (B) is plausible – yes, the passage doesn’t mention long term profits and higher prices specifically, but it does discuss profits and prices, and freshness. Line 26 says that “this ‘pick-your-own’ farming is crucial for profitability” and line 29 goes on to say “using clients as harvesters allows the farmer to charge 60 percent of what supermarkets charge and still operate the farm at a profit”. Finally, line 36 says ‘the CMC would consist primarily of people from metropolitan areas who value fresh produce”. From all this, it is not unreasonable to think:
“If farms are still making a profit by charging 60 percent of what supermarkets charge, they can make more of a profit by charging more than 60 percent of what supermarkets charge, and even exactly what supermarkets charge, and see higher profits ( in the long term, as well as the short term). And farms would be able to do this and still attract customers because people value the freshness of their produce.”
It is perhaps reasonable to say that the passage provides slightly less support for inferring (B), but I don’t see how D is more reasonable to infer than C.