2022 CSAT — Q21

Locate. This is a valid-assumptions question: don’t hunt for a matching sentence — find the passage’s actual claims and test each candidate against them. The passage: yield plateaus; technology can help; “agricultural technology is changing fast. Much of this change is brought about by affluent farmers in the West/Americas”; “Technology is of little use if it is not adapted. In the developing world, that applies as much to existing farming techniques as it does to the latest advances in genetic modification.”

Test (negation test + boundary check). Statement 1 — “development of agricultural technology is confined to developed countries.” The passage says much of the change comes from the West/Americas — a hedge, not an exclusivity. “Confined to” strengthens “much” into “only,” changing the passage’s level of certainty. Negate it (“development is not confined to developed countries”) and the passage’s argument is untouched — it never needed exclusivity. INVALID. Statement 2 — “agricultural technology is not adapted in developing countries.” The passage’s actual claim is the opposite-facing one: adaptation matters in the developing world (“applies as much to existing farming techniques…”). It never states that technology is not adapted there — it stresses that it must be. “Is not adapted” is an invented factual assertion, sounding reasonable but unsupported. INVALID.

Eliminate by anatomy. (a)/(c) seat Statement 1 — a change in the passage’s level of certainty: “much from the West” read as “confined to the West.” (b)/(c) seat Statement 2 — a claim that sounds reasonable but is unsupported: a passage that says adaptation is needed misread as a claim that adaptation does not happen. The transferable rule: an assumption that inflates a “much/some” into an “only/all,” or that flips a “must be done” into a “is not done,” is not what the argument rests on. Neither holds. Key: (d).

Statement 1 — the passage says “Much of this change is brought about by affluent farmers in the West/Americas”: “much” is a HEDGE, not “confined/only.” “Confined to developed countries” strengthens “much… in the West” into an exclusivity the text never claims → QUALIFIER boundary fails → INVALID. Statement 2 — the passage says “Technology is of little use if it is not adapted. In the developing world, that applies as much to existing farming techniques as it does to the latest advances”: this asserts that adaptation matters in the developing world, NOT that technology is not adapted there. “Is not adapted” is an unstated factual claim the passage never makes → INVALID. Neither survives → (d).

The passage makes two relevant claims: (i) much agri-tech change is driven by affluent Western farmers; (ii) technology is useless unless adapted, and in the developing world this applies to existing techniques as much as to genetic modification.

Statement 1 — “confined to developed countries.” The passage says much change comes from the West, not that development happens only there. Inflating “much” to “confined” is a qualifier overreach. Invalid.

Statement 2 — “not adapted in developing countries.” The passage urges that technology must be adapted in the developing world; it never claims it is not. The assumption inverts a prescription into a factual negative. Invalid.

Answer: (d) Neither 1 nor 2.

Both distractor statements are built from the same passage lines, twisted in opposite directions: St.1 over-strengthens a quantifier (“much” → “confined”), St.2 inverts a prescription (“must be adapted” → “is not adapted”). The disciplined move is to ask, per statement, does the passage’s argument require this to be true? — and the answer is no for both. The passage’s point is that adaptation and extension of good practice would raise food availability; neither an exclusivity claim nor a does-not-adapt claim is load-bearing. (d).