Advocates of organic food believe they will be able to foster consumer

Why like is preferred over As .
Is consumer community compared to societies of old or their coexistence .

'As' is used for verbs, while 'like' is used for nouns. Here both 'like' and 'as' are used properly. Only issue is with the second clause usage which is correct only in option 'C'.

Don't go for your Ears .....communities in C is correctly explaining the previous phrase....Like is perfectly fine.....Though A would have been a better choice if " these " is ignored.

A. as the societies of old did— communities that will be able to build a strong local economy, maintaining a close connection with the soil, or other goals such as these
-"Use of as" - correctly used of comparing clauses
-"use of maintaining"- verb-ing = shows the result of previous clause.
Meaning wise- maintaining connection or maintaining other goals. Meaning wise fine.
- "goals such as these" - but the previous statement is referring to a single goal. "These" is wrong.
-Wrong

B. as the societies of old did, which may be able to achieve such goals as building a strong local economy or maintaining a close connection with the soil
-"which" refers to ability to coexist.
But "which" can only refer to a noun

C. like the societies of old— communities that will be able to achieve such goals as building a strong local economy and maintaining a close connection with the soil
-"like" comparing two societies. Hence is correct
-there are 2 goals - "building" & "maintaining"
- Correct

D. like the societies of old, the achievement of which would be for goals like the building of a strong local economy or the maintenance of a close connection with the soil
-"the achievement of which". Here "which" is used in the same as it is used in option B - wrong
- "goals like" - such as is better
-Erong

E. like the societies of old, to be achieved by building a strong local economy, maintaining a close connection with the soil, or the like
- "or the like" - wrong
- "to be achieved" - wrong
-wrong

Posted from my mobile device

My answer is C, which is correct but this sentence took me 2.22 mins to complete, and I'm not so satisfied with the answer. First, I virtually eliminate the answer starting with "like" because the sentence should compare they way the new community is doing with the old one did. I'm not sure why they use ''like'' here because we only use ''like'' for Noun comparison. However, all the answer starting with ''as'' turned out to be wrong in some ways so I started reading all over again.

Advocates of organic food believe they will be able to foster consumer communities that can avoid the negative side effects of pesticides, eat healthier, and coexist with the environment as the societies of old did—communities that will be able to build a strong local economy, maintaining a close connection with the soil, or other goals such as these.

A. as the societies of old did— communities that will be able to build a strong local economy, maintaining a close connection with the soil, or other goals such as these
=> There was parallelism error here

B. as the societies of old did, which may be able to achieve such goals as building a strong local economy or maintaining a close connection with the soil
=> ''which'' should refer to a noun but I did not see any noun that stand close to this relative clause

C. like the societies of old— communities that will be able to achieve such goals as building a strong local economy and maintaining a close connection with the soil
=> no flaw, but the use of ''like'' did not satisfy me

D. like the societies of old, the achievement of which would be for goals like the building of a strong local economy or the maintenance of a close connection with the soil
=> when we have a list, we should use ''such as'' instead of ''like
E. like the societies of old, to be achieved by building a strong local economy, maintaining a close connection with the soil, or the like