PrepTest 35, Section 2, Question 26
Kim: The rapidly growing world population is increasing demands on food producers in ways that threaten our natural resources. With more land needed for both food production and urban areas, less land will be available for forests and wildlife habitats.
Kim: The rapidly growing world population is increasing demands on food producers in ways that threaten our natural resources. With more land needed for both food production and urban areas, less land will be available for forests and wildlife habitats.
Hampton: You are overlooking the promise of technology. I am confident that improvements in agriculture will allow us to feed the world population of ten billion predicted for 2050 without significantly increasing the percentage of the world's land now devoted to agriculture.
Kim: The rapidly growing world population is increasing demands on food producers in ways that threaten our natural resources. With more land needed for both food production and urban areas, less land will be available for forests and wildlife habitats.
Hampton: You are overlooking the promise of technology. I am confident that improvements in agriculture will allow us to feed the world population of ten billion predicted for 2050 without significantly increasing the percentage of the world's land now devoted to agriculture.
Kim: The rapidly growing world population is increasing demands on food producers in ways that threaten our natural resources. With more land needed for both food production and urban areas, less land will be available for forests and wildlife habitats.
Kim's and Hampton's statements most strongly support the claim that both of them would agree with which one of the following?
Efforts should be taken to slow the rate of human population growth and to increase the amount of land committed to agriculture.
Continued research into more-efficient agricultural practices and innovative biotechnology aimed at producing more food on less land would be beneficial.
Agricultural and wilderness areas need to be protected from urban encroachment by preparing urban areas for greater population density.
In the next half century, human population growth will continue to erode wildlife habitats and diminish forests.
The human diet needs to be modified in the next half century because of the depletion of our natural resources due to overpopulation.
Explanations
While these speakers disagree over how much land will be available to feed a growing population, we're asked to determine where they agree.
They both acknowledge a growing populace and presumably increased demand for food.
But that's about it. So the right answer on this one may be something one step removed from that single point of agreement. No matter what, though, we'll need to be able to affirm that both speakers would agree with the answer choice. That's our fallback option for double-checking answer choices.
Let's see.
No way. Neither author says anything even close to slowing population growth.
Bingo. Kim wants us to use less land, so she would support this. Hampton's disagreement with Kim hinges on his belief in technology saving nature from the agricultural demand of a growing populace, so he would also agree with this. This is the answer.
No chance. Similarly to A, we have no evidence that either author would support these urban changes. Maybe Kim, but it's a maybe at best.
Nah, this is a trap. Kim would agree with this, but Hampton thinks technology will prevent this.
Nope. Like A and C, neither speaker weighs in on changes to the human diet.
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