Self-study
Farmer: Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation that do not use commercial products may solve agricultural problems at least as well as any technique, such as pesticide application, that does use such products. ████████████ ██ ███████ ██████████ ███████████ ████ ███████ ████████ ████ ██ ████████ ██ ████ ██ ██████████ █████████ █████ ███ ███ ████ █████ ████ ████████████████████ ████████ ████████████ ████████████ ██████████ ████ ██ ███ ███ ██████████ █████████
Summarize Argument
The author concludes that generally, only government-sponsored research investigates agricultural techniques that don’t use commercial products. This is based on the fact that private for-profit corporations don’t sponsor research that’s unlikely to lead to marketable products.
Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that agricultural techniques that don’t use commercial products are unlikely to lead to the creation of marketable products. The author also assumes that there’s no other source that could conduct research into agricultural techniques that don’t use commercial products besides private for-profit corporations and the government.
10.
Which one of the following, ██ █████ ████ ███████████ ███ ████████ █████████
a
The government sponsors ██ █████ ████ ██████████████ ██ ████████████ ██████████ ████ ███ ██████████ ██████ ██ █████ ████████████ ████████ ███ ██ ███ ███ ██████████ █████████
This doesn’t help establish that only government-sponsored research investigates these techniques. (A) tells us that the government does at least some of this research, but we don’t know whether there could be other sources that also do this research.
b
For almost any ████████████ ████████ █████ ██ ██ █████ ███ ████████████ █████████ ████ ████ ███ ███ ██████████ ████████ ███ ████ █████ █████ ████ ████████████ ████████
This doesn’t help establish what kinds of entities research agricultural techniques and whether governments are the only ones who will research techniques that are unlikely to lead to marketable products.
c
Investigations of agricultural ██████████ ███ ██████ █████████ ██ ███████████ ██ ██ ███ ██████ █████ ████ ███████ ██████████ ████████████ ██ ███ ███████████
This strengthens the argument by limiting the potential entities that conduct research to, in most cases, private for-profit corporations and the government. Since the premises already eliminate private corporations as a source of research, we’re left with the government.
d
Most if not ███ ██████████████ ██ ████████████ ██████████ ████ ███ ██████████ ████████ ███ █████████ ██ ███████ ██████████ █████████████
The argument is concerned with research into techniques that don’t use commercial products. Which entities research the techniques that do use commercial products has no impact on the reasoning.
e
Most if not ███ ████████████████████ ████████████ ████████ ████████████ ████████████ ██████████ ████ ██ ███ ███ ██████████ █████████
This doesn’t help show that research investigating agricultural techniques that don’t use commercial products is exclusively done by the government. (E) leaves open the possibility that non-government entities also do a lot of this research.