The rate of growth in global coffee consumption has been falling behin

Official Explanation

1. For each of the following statements, select Yes if, based on the information provided in the passage or the first graph or both, the statement would have been true in 2003. Otherwise, select No.

The first graph indicates that it includes, for each major coffee-producing country other than Brazil, the amount of coffee produced by the country in 2003 and the per capita amount of coffee consumed by the country. The line at the top of the graph indicates that Brazil's per-capita coffee consumption in 2003 is 4.5 kg per year, greater than that of each of the other countries in the graph. The text accompanying the graph indicates that Brazil's coffee production exceeds that of Central America. The graph indicates that each of the major coffee-producing countries in 2003 produced less than the combined production of the countries of Central America. Therefore, each of the major coffee-producing countries produced less coffee in 2003 than did Brazil.

The correct answer is Yes.

While both the discussion and the first graph pertain to coffee consumption among those living in coffee-producing countries, neither suggests that this consumption comes entirely from coffee produced in that country.

The correct answer is No.

In the first graph, the roughly equal sizes of the bubbles representing India and China show that in 2003 those countries were roughly equal in population. And the bubbles' very low positions in the graph show that consumers in both countries consumed comparatively little coffee per capita. But the bubbles' positions along the horizontal axis show that in 2003 India produced about 5 million 60 kg bags of coffee, whereas China produced less than 500,000 60 kg bags of coffee. Much more coffee was domestically produced in India than in China, though the two countries were similarly large in population and low in per-capita coffee consumption; thus it appears that increasing consumption of domestically produced coffee had greater potential in India than in China to boost world coffee demand.

The correct answer is Yes.

2. Which one of the following data ranges in the second graph most clearly indicates that the final sentence of the Discussion tab involves oversimplification?

The Discussion tab's final sentence says "for the 20 years up to 2003 in Brazil, it was only during the period 1993 to 1998 that coffee consumption increased as income was increasing." If this sentence involves oversimplification, there must have been some period outside the years 1993 to 1998 during which both coffee consumption and income were increasing in Brazil. In the second graph, such simultaneous increases would be represented by both the blue bars and the black line increasing in height from left to right in a section of the graph representing some years before 1993 or after 1998. And indeed there is exactly one such section, representing the years 1988 and 1989, in which the blue bars and the black line both increase in height from left to right. So the data shown in the graph for the period 1988 to 1989 indicate that the Discussion tab's final sentence involves oversimplification.

The correct answer is D.

3. Assuming each of the following statements is true, select Yes if the statement helps explain trends shown in the second graph in a way that is consistent with information in the passage. Otherwise, select No.

The discussion indicates that the Brazilian institutional investment to develop domestic coffee consumption yielded a large increase in coffee sales over ten years. The second graph shows that Brazil's per capita coffee consumption increased steadily from 1995 through 2001 after several years of relative stability in the early 1990s. If Brazil's institutional investment program began in 1993, it could help explain that steady increase in per capita consumption from 1995 through 2001.

The correct answer is Yes.

The second graph shows that Brazil's per-capita monthly income fell significantly from 2000 to 2003. Since the passage indicates that Brazil was a major coffee-producing country, an economic recession resulting from a decline in worldwide demand for coffee beginning in 1999 could help explain this trend.

The correct answer is Yes.

If the statement is taken as an explanation of Brazil's increase in per-capita coffee consumption, it would conflict with the information in the passage indicating that the increase in consumption was due to institutional investment. If it is merely taken as a description of how Brazil's increase in per-capita coffee consumption coincided with the global per-capita rate of coffee production, it would have no explanatory value.

The correct answer is No.