LSAT 113 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q5

LR Question 5 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: After 1950, in response to record growth in worldwide…

QUESTION TYPE: Paradox

CONCLUSION: Farmers once managed to increase productivity with fertilizer. Now they want to increase productivity again, but fertilizer use is dropping.

ANALYSIS: Sometimes a certain tactic will be effective up to a point but then stop working. The right answer tells us this happened with fertilizer.

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1. This just tells us there will be lots of mouths to feed. It doesn’t say anything about fertilizer.
2. If this is the case then we would expect fertilizer to be used for soybeans as well.
3. This doesn’t explain why farmers don’t try again with fertilizer now.
4. CORRECT. Fertilizer use has reached its limit. It made impressive gains in the past but now it can’t do much to improve productivity. 
5. This describes something temporary. The decline in fertilizer use only began in 1985, five years after these events.