One proposal for preserving rain forests is to promote the adoption of

AjiteshArun
GMATNinja

Please help.
I have divided this passage in 3 parts, and I would like to know how these 3 para connected to each other.
or I should rephrase my question: why author mentioned these 3 para in this sequence?


1-One proposal for preserving rain forests is to promote the adoption of new agricultural technologies, such as improved plant varieties and use of chemical herbicides, which would increase productivity and slow deforestation by reducing demand for new cropland.

2-Studies have shown that farmers in developing countries who have achieved certain levels of education, wealth, and security of land tenure are more likely to adopt such technologies. But these studies have focused on villages with limited land that are tied to a market economy rather than on the relatively isolated, self-sufficient communities with ample land characteristic of rain-forest regions.

3-A recent study of the Tawahka people of the Honduran rain forest found that farmers with some formal education were more likely to adopt improved plant varieties but less likely to use chemical herbicides and that those who spoke Spanish (the language of the market economy) were more likely to adopt both technologies. Non-land wealth was also associated with more adoption of both technologies, but availability of uncultivated land reduced the incentive to employ the productivity-enhancing technologies. Researchers also measured land-tenure security: in Tawahka society, kinship ties are a more important indicator of this than are legal property rights, so researchers measured it by a household’s duration of residence in its village. They found that longer residence correlated with more adoption of improved plant varieties but less adoption of chemical herbicides.

The primary purpose of the passage is to (D) present the results of new research suggesting that previous findings concerning one set of conditions may not be generalizable to another set of conditions

Note these questions are based on the same passage found in GMAT Prep but with different questions: https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-prep-rc ... 19458.html
OG 2019 ID's:
RC00455-03 for OG 2019 411
RC00455-05 for OG 2019 412

Can someone please explain to me how A in 3 is an "assumption" based on the passage?
The passage states "in T society kinship ties are more important indicator of this than any legal property rights". How is this an assumption? This is a fact stated in the passage? What am I missing here?

Researchers also measured land-tenure security: in Tawahka society, kinship ties are a more important indicator of this than are legal property rights, so researchers measured it by a household’s duration of residence in its village.

(A) The security of a household’s land tenure depends on the strength of that household’s kinship ties, and the duration of a household’s residence in its village is an indication of the strength of that household’s kinship ties.

Can you please explain how did we arrived at option C for Ques 2? Why option E is wrong ?

GMATNinja
Please help with questions 4.
I came to D and E but went with E.
the question says if valid for rain-forest regions in general.
the answer choice D is related to only the relatively isolated, self-sufficient communities with ample land characteristic of rain-forest regions.
Hence, I eliminated and went with E.
Could you please explain why E is wrong and D is correct?
thank you in advance!

(E) Traditions of self-sufficiency and reliance on kinship ties tend to diminish local farmers’ receptivity to new agricultural technologies introduced by people from outside the local community

(D) Ready availability of uncultivated land tends to decrease local farmers’ incentive to adopt new agricultural technologies that would reduce their need to clear new land for cultivation.

What is the suggested time to read the passage and attempt the questions. I took 8 mins 50 secs but answered all Qs correctly. Is the timing too slow?

Hello, Nonktp. I would be happy to offer to offer some insights into my approach on this question. Before I jump into a passage, I typically scan the first question so that I can go into reading the passage with some sort of frame in mind, apart from main idea/authorial presence concerns. The question:


First off, a suggest or inference question does not give you license to "read between the lines," as my students sometimes tell me. Although that interpretation may be accurate with other reading tasks, on the GMAT™, inference means one of two things:

1) What does the passage state, possibly in a slightly different manner (i.e. using synonyms for a few words)?

2) What does the passage state, perhaps forcing you to cobble together information from one sentence or paragraph and information from another, when the two bits are not combined as such in the passage?

Yeah, that is it. The closer you stick to the passage, the more questions you will answer correctly. Stick to the keywords of the question stem, and match them to their counterparts in the passage, a simple yet highly effective strategy. Here, our keywords are security of land tenure and Tawahka society. Thus, we have to make sure our answer is accurate on both fronts. We cannot project any information from one key phrase onto the other. With that out of the way, on to our responses.


Like just about anyone else, I hate long-winded answer choices. They present numerous opportunities to get sidetracked. But here, I cannot find anything to argue against. Why? Because the passage states in the penultimate sentence,

Researchers also measured land-tenure security: in Tawahka society, kinship ties are a more important indicator of this than are legal property rights, so researchers measured it by a household’s duration of residence in its village.

In Tawahka Society, it is clear that kinship ties matter, in terms of land-tenure security. Furthermore, researchers measured [land-tenure security] by how long a household had established residence in its village. The answer choice and the line from the passage match, almost verbatim. What more could you want in an answer?


Note the strong, judgmental language. Quite often, such answer choices take an idea too far, and this one is no different. The passage does not indicate that land-tenure security is unimportant. If it did, then what would be the point in the researchers studying land-tenure security? Rather, the passage tells us that another factor, namely kinship ties via duration of residence, is a more important indicator of land-tenure security than are legal property rights. More important does not suggest that the alternative is unimportant.


I will be honest and admit that I did not even untangle the first part before eliminating this answer choice based on the second part. The latter portion here is twisting words, and no such comparison between duration of residence and kinship ties is made in the passage. Again, the researchers used duration of residence and kinship ties in tandem to measure land-tenure security in Tawahka society. I like to say that if you can argue definitively against anything in an answer choice, as long as you are keeping an eye on the passage, then that is enough to see off that answer. I will leave the former part for another time, perhaps. (The clock would have been ticking if I had not already eliminated the answer and moved on.)


The last line of the passage presents information that flies in the face of this statement:

[The researchers] found that longer residence correlated with more adoption of improved plant varieties but less adoption of chemical herbicides.

If that does not seal the deal, then I am not sure how much more proof you need.


These conditionals, which you can interpret as saying only if, are getting in the way here, not to mention that this is all pure speculation. The passage presents ways in which the Tawahka society operates, regarding the security of land tenure, by not placing an emphasis on legal property rights. This answer kind of reminds me of the different cases in formal logic in which a statement if p then q can be reinterpreted, sometimes with clearly incorrect conclusions, into the inverse (if not p then not q), converse (if q then p), and contrapositive (if not q then not p). We do not need to waste our time sorting out what could be true when the passage tells us what is already going on.

I hope that helps answer your question. Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

Hello AndrewN - What is Nonland wealth?