Hi
GMATNinja VeritasPrepKarishma GMATNinjaTwoI am stumped by the answer choices and was not able to perform PoE correctly.
My understanding of argument:
Quote:
Pecan growers get a high price for their crop when pecans are comparatively scarce, but the price drops sharply when pecans are abundant.
A particular food grain farmers get high price when these grains are less in supply than demand. Obviously prices rises up to meet demand and vice versa.
Quote:
Thus, in high-yield years, growers often hold back part of their crop in refrigerated warehouses for one or two years, hoping for higher prices in the future.
When the food grains are cultivated in abundance, the farmers store some of them in cold storage for x duration so that they can sell them when prices are high.
Quote:
This year's pecan crop was the smallest in five years. It is nonetheless quite possible that a portion of this year's crop will be held back, since
What happened this year was: The yield was smallest in last five years, So I pause and think: Definitely storage is not possible due to lower yields.
The word - nonetheless - shows that I will be presented with a contrast. The contrast is that : farmers decide to NOT sell all of the food grains. This is surprising to me as well since if lower yields are there in current year, why would they not sell all it it? Ideally they should be getting higher price this year and not store / held back food grains.
The correct answer choice will resolve this mystery.
PoE:
Quote:
(A) each of the last two years produced record breaking pecan yields
So what? In current time, why do farmers need to store food grains in cold storage.
This option says that this year and last year
each produced much more food grains
than ever produced in history. But how does this explain the farmers may want to SELL food grains
and STORE it?
Quote:
(B) the quality of this year's pecan crop is no worse than the quality of the pecan crops of the previous five years
Quality is irrelevant to argument
Quote:
(C) pecan prices have not been subject to sharp fluctuations in recent years
Seems close, if fluctuations itself are not guaranteed , the action of farmers to store shall be not be a reliable one
Quote:
(D) for some pecan growers, this year's crop was no smaller than last year's
This increases the mystery further
Quote:
(E) the practice of holding back part of one year's crop had not yet become widespread the last time the pecan crop was as small as it was this year
I am not sure if widespread of a particular practice is relevant. But note the later part of choice: since this year also my yield was as low as last year the mystery gets deepened instead of resolving.
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