LSAT 157 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q3

LR Question 3 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Although there are immediate short-term gains in crop yield…

QUESTION TYPE: Complete the Argument

CONCLUSION: The financial benefit from use of these pesticides is initially high, but decreases over time. [predicted conclusion]

REASONING: The stimulus tells us that the pesticide initially has an increasing effect on crop yield, but that initial increase diminishes over time. As more crops means more to sell, we can conclude that the financial benefit of the pesticides will follow a similar trend.

ANALYSIS: This is a fairly simple question, as there is not a lot to work with. You just have to make the leap from crop yield to financial gain, or recognize from the answer choices that it is an accurate conclusion.

___________

1. The stimulus does not indicate that pesticides are uneconomic. You may have picked this answer thinking that diminishing returns meant bad investment, but it doesn’t necessarily. Crop yield after the pesticide might still be above the initial yield, even after the diminishing returns.
2. We don’t have anything in the stimulus to conclude that the pesticides are damaging to the environment. You may have picked this based on external knowledge about pesticides, but that’s not part of the argument in the stimulus.
3. We don’t have enough to conclude this. It sounds like a pesticide’s effectiveness decreases over long-term use, but that doesn’t mean that pests become unmanageable by any means.
4. The stimulus does not contain any information that leads to this conclusion. If it had said that the manufacturer’s instructions would have avoided the diminishing returns, it would be different. But there is nothing to indicate that the use is inconsistent with the manufacturer’s instructions.
5. CORRECT. See above analysis.

Recap: The question begins with “Although there are immediate short-term gains in crop yield”. It is a Complete the Argument question. Learn how to master LSAT Complete the Argument questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.