For farmers in the Salinas Valley, the vegetable growing business has

For farmers in the Salinas Valley, the vegetable growing business has always been one of economic ups and downs, the downs usually because of unfavorable weather that killed crops, or they ripened too quickly.

We are told of general facts relating to the farm growing business, so any sentence that implies one-off events or occurrences instead of general facts/ truths about the business is incorrect.
(A) because of unfavorable weather that killed crops, or they ripened
(C) being caused by unfavorable weather that killed or ripened crops

Next, "that they ripen" is incorrect as "that" could really only refer to "unfavourable weather", so plural "they" just doesn't make logical sense. Who is they?
(E) caused by unfavorable weather killing crops, or that they ripen

I got tripped on B, but I realise now that "killing crops quickly" is extremely colloquial. We should also always prefer a clause to a phrase.
D contains the two effects: kills/ ripens in a clause.
in D "caused by" correctly modifies "the downs"

(B) because of unfavorable weather killing or ripening crops

(D) caused by unfavorable weather that kills crops or ripens them

Has to be Kills, the word Kills falls perfectly in the sentence and also it is better to use caused rather than becasue

HI AndrewN, GMATCoachBen

Can you please help me with this question?

I was confused by POE.

Hello, NandishSS. I would be happy to offer my thoughts to assist you and the larger community. The first thing that strikes my eye is the split at the head of the underlined portion. Should it be because of or caused by?

the downs [are] usually _______ unfavorable weather

You might question why I stuck a verb in there when the sentence structure requires its absence—the underlined portion is a modifier. The verb simply provides an easy way to focus on this part of the sentence without getting lost in too many details. And this is a straightforward split. To be honest, I was expecting because of versus due to. Remember, because of is used to modify verbs, and the sentence is clearly outlining that a noun, the downs, needs to be modified instead. Thus, we can eliminate choices (A) and (B). Meanwhile, due to is used to modify nouns, and guess what? A replacement for due to is caused by, as this e-GMAT article explains in depth.

The presence of being in choice (C) gives us reason to pause. I left it on the table without looking at the rest of the answer choice and compared (D) and (E) instead, looking for weaknesses in either. Here, we encounter an internal split between weather that kills and weather killing. Not only does the former fit the context seamlessly, but the latter part of (E) is ungrammatical. I mean, a comma plus or that they ripen? What is that supposed to mean? Choice (E) is out.

Looking at (D), there is simply nothing to single out to argue against. Caused by makes sense, as explained earlier, as does weather that kills crops. Finally, we have an A or B construct that presents two downsides: weather that [either] kills crops or ripens [crops] too quickly. This makes perfect sense, and the grammar checks out. If you felt like checking (C) one last time, you will notice that it shifts into the simple past tense for no reason. The earlier present perfect has always been indicates that we need to conjugate our verbs in the underlined portion to suggest an ongoing cycle (of ups and downs). The simple past comments merely on, well, the past. We can feel confident choosing (D).

I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me about the question. I have to run to a lesson!

- Andrew

Thank You AndrewN for the wonderful explanation

Thanks for the explanation.

Takeaway: "Because of" modify verbs, whereas "caused by / due to" modify nouns. In the present case, "caused by" modifies downs.

Why doesn't D require "that" be used after the or?
"that kills crops or that ripens them too quickly"

does "or" not have the same parallelism constraints as "and", and only requires the verbs be parallel ?

Can someone explain usage of due to vs becaus vs caused by?

Hey TBT

Happy to help.


Please read this article to understand the difference between 'due to' and 'because of'.

Now that you've understood the difference, let's take a look at this question:

For farmers in the Salinas Valley, the vegetable growing business has always been one of economic ups and downs, the downs usually caused by unfavorable weather that kills crops or ripens them too quickly.

Note that here 'caused' behaves as a verb-ed modifier of the noun 'downs'. In this context, we can even modify 'downs' with the help of the preposition 'because of'. So, the two don't make much of a difference in this question.


Hope this helps improve your understanding.


Happy Learning!

Abhishek

GMATNinja EducationAisle IanStewart Can I eliminate options A, B, C, and D on the basis of wrong tense used? Since the sentence is about a phenomenon that happens USUALLY, we need to use simple present tense. Please confirm.

Well, D is the OA:).

Also, you might want to note that the phrase "unfavorable weather killing or ripening crops" (in option B) doesn't really have any explicit tense associated with it.

Nah. Here, have an example:

"Tim usually watered the flowers on Friday, but last week he decided to throw caution to the wind and water them on Thursday, causing all of them to die."

"Watered" is a past tense verb modified by "usually." Not a problem here. We're talking about a past tendency.

All to say: the most concrete issues in the incorrect options are related to faulty parallelism or illogical meaning. If you're having trouble spotting those problems, let us know!