Fact A: After instituting a proposal to boost crop production by incre

Question

Princeton Review

Fact A: After instituting a proposal to boost crop production by increasing fertilizer by 25%, cabbage farmers found, to their surprise, that their cabbage harvest yielded roughly the same volume of crops after the increase as before the increase.

Fact B: The fertilizer used has always helped to increase plant production at the applied dosage, even when given to crops hampered by pests or disease.

Choose the statements that can be most properly inferred from Fact A and Fact B, respectively.

Catman · Answer

1. The proposal was instituted at a time when cabbage crop production was already the highest it had ever been.
Incorrect and Not related to Fact A and Fact B, There is no mention about the crop production being highest or lowest, only proposal was to increase the yield by 25% which did not happen.

2. The farmers did not anticipate the lack of response of the cabbage crop to the larger amount of fertilizer.  Correct for Fact A, Farmers were anticipating that the new fertilizer will increase the yield by 25% as proposed, but they were surprised when it did not happen.

3. This was not the only time the farmers had attempted to increase cabbage crop production by applying larger amounts of fertilizer. Incorrect no data is mentioned regarding farmers using other methods to increase the crop production.

4. The farmers relied entirely on the fertilizer to produce an increase. Incorrect, it is not mention that farmers use or not use any products other than these fertilizer.

5. There are at least some plant illnesses that have not resulted in a drop in crop production when mitigated by the fertilizer. " Correct for Fact B, the result in crop production attributed to the fact that fertilizer has minimized the production loss which arises due to the plant illness. If there was no plant illness than the yield will be increased as proposed.

Hence Statement 2 for Fact A and Statement 5 for Fact B.

akshaypratap278 · Answer

Even after fertilizer addition, no growth ---> Surprise farmers.

Th option which said that the crops yield might be at highest is tempting for Fact A. But even if it is highest, so what? Where is it said that it can't grow further? Better option is "Farmers did not anticipate that crops won't respond". And maybe that's why they were surprised too.

About fact B, it said that growth happens even when crops are infected with disease. Imagine, if all the diseases led to crop deterioration? Will the growth still happen? No. That means, there are atleast some illnesses which doesn't affect the yield.

MukuDawra · Answer

Hi

I am not satisfied with the explanation given for the inference from fact 2.

Fact: The fertilizer used has always helped to increase plant production at the applied dosage, even when given to crops hampered by pests or disease.

Why cant statement 3 be the answer as in fact its clearly mentioned that fertilizers used has always helped to increase production. So we can infer that this was not the only time farmers had attempted to increase cabbage crop production. The only default I can find in this discrepancy is that in fact nowhere its mentioned about cabbage and whether they have actually used it for growth of production or just simply to prevent from pests?
Please let me know if I am thinking in the right direction or not?

Gemmie · Answer

Fact A Inference: The farmers did not anticipate the lack of response of the cabbage crop to the larger amount of fertilizer.  
This directly aligns with Fact A, where the farmers were surprised by the lack of increase despite applying more fertilizer.

Fact B Inference: There are at least some plant illnesses that have not resulted in a drop in crop production when mitigated by the fertilizer.  
This aligns with Fact B, which highlights the fertilizer's effectiveness in counteracting pests and diseases.

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The proposal was instituted at a time when cabbage crop production was already the highest it had ever been. 
This cannot be inferred from the provided facts. There's no information indicating the baseline production level of cabbage before the proposal.

This was not the only time the farmers had attempted to increase cabbage crop production by applying larger amounts of fertilizer. 
This cannot be inferred from the provided facts. There's no information indicating the farmers had made the attempts before.

The farmers relied entirely on the fertilizer to produce an increase. 
This is not supported by the facts. The fertilizer's effectiveness to increaseing yield is mentioned. We don't know the farmers' overall strategy.

Purple_Wizard · Answer

I agree with this explanation - the  use of the word 'always' and 'even when' suggests that such dosage has been used previously. 
 chetan2u   KarishmaB   GMATNinja  please share your views. Of the 2 options for Fact B - statement 3 looks more likely than statement 5.

chetan2u · Answer

The inference is from individual statements, so I would read them separately..

The option suggests that the farmers in Fact A had tried the fertilizer earlier, and that cannot be inferred from Fact 2, as it simply states that the usage of optimum dosage results in increase in production.

eaquequos · Answer

bb  and  Bunuel , I had a doubt, what if the fertilizers doesnt work on cabbage, as in the question, its nowhere mentioned that it has give positive results for cabbage production and in this case, the answer for fact b(that there must be some disease) wont hold. Moreover, there could be other conditions, maybe the temperature that year werent suitable enough or there could have any floods or drought etc. In all these cases the the inference would fall apart

bb · Answer

That’s a good theory and assumption but Are you using fat A’s information for fact B?

I’m thinking you need to be evaluating them independently here almost like in DS.

eaquequos · Answer

Thanks for the reply  bb , 
Fact B states "  The fertilizer used has always helped to increase plant production at the applied dosage". Its mentioned " The"  fertilizer used and " the " applied dosage, seems that Fact B is referring to Fact A's information.

Focusing on this, none of the statements mentioned in the question can be inferred from Fact B. Is my thinking correct?

hadesftw · Answer

Fact B suggests that the fertilizer has increased PLANT production before, but question 3 refers to CABBAGE CROP production. so would this be a good reason to eliminate question 3? and if it instead referred to PLANT production, would question 3 be correct for Fact B?

Bunuel · Answer

I'm archiving this topic.

Fact A: After instituting a proposal to boost crop production by incre

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Fact A:	Fact B:	Statements
		The proposal was instituted at a time when cabbage crop production was already the highest it had ever been.
		The farmers did not anticipate the lack of response of the cabbage crop to the larger amount of fertilizer.
		This was not the only time the farmers had attempted to increase cabbage crop production by applying larger amounts of fertilizer.
		The farmers relied entirely on the fertilizer to produce an increase.
		There are at least some plant illnesses that have not resulted in a drop in crop production when mitigated by the fertilizer.