Q5 - After 1950, in response to

[tzyc]

Is (E) wrong because what happened between 1975 and 1980 does not matter?
The temporary price increase cannot have influence the price after the period?

And...I have a bit more general question.
Is it safe to establish my own reasoning why the answer is correct/wrong when I review the quetions?
Especially for those questions I do not see in the forums...and especially for LR and RC.
"What if the reasoning is wrong" or "what if I misread/miss what it says" those things bother me a lot...(when I find a clear reason, I can stick to it but sometimes I feel "I think this is the reason but not sure..." especially for the 4 wrong answers) By the way, this forum helps me a lot...thank you so much!!

[tommywallach]

Hey Strawberry,

In answer to your first question, you're exactly right. The issue here is that 1975-1980 will not affect the discrepancy, which is that fertilizer use has gone down since 1985 even though farmers are still trying to increase yields (also since 1985).

As to your second question, I'm not quite sure what you mean. Every LSAT question from every source has had a lot of explanations made for it. All you have to do is Google a few words, and you'll find a lot of stuff. Now, not everyone is a super-genius, and there's some bad advice out there. But once you've got a sense of how things work, you should be able to separate good from bad for yourself.

Hope that helps!

-t

[emily315]

don't understand why C is incorrect and how D is better than C.
If D is correct that fertilizer remained within the soil many years after and it will no longer improve the crop production, then how come the farmers increased farm productivity even further? Isn't C a perfect answer here?

[ohthatpatrick]

We always set up Paradox questions in the form of,
"Given that ______ , how come ______ ?"

Given that
more fertilizer went hand-in-hand with increased farmland productivity from 1950 to 1985
and that
since 1985, we've desired even more farmland productivity,
How come
since 1985, people are using LESS fertilizer?

(A) This answer is about global population and arable land, which is too far removed from the topic of fertilizer/productivity.

(B) If this said that "RECENT crops are LESS responsive to fertilizer", that could have been a way to explain why recently (since 1985) we've used less fertilizer.

(C) This doesn't speak to the time period we care about ... why are they using less pesticide since 1985?

(D) This works. This gives a reason why, since 1985, they've used less fertilizer even though they still seek more productivity. Since they've already been using fertilizer for 35 years, they're not getting much uptick in productivity from additional fertilizer.

(E) If the answer said, "Since 1985, fertilizer prices have increased", that could give us a way to explain why we're using less fertilizer since 1985.


(to the previous poster ... it sounds like you're thinking that after 1985 there WAS more farmland productivity. It only says that farmers SOUGHT such productivity, not that they obtained it.)