NDA (II) 2016 General Ability Test · Question 137 of 150

Correct — D, Brazil – India – China. World Bank figures for arable land per person in 2015 put Brazil at about 0·27 hectares, India at about 0·12 hectares and China at about 0·08 hectares, so the descending order is exactly as the option gives it. The reasoning behind the numbers is a matter of dividing a large area by a large population. Brazil has a vast cultivable interior and only about a fifth of India's population, so it comes out well ahead. Between India and China, India's population in 2015 was slightly smaller while its arable area was appreciably larger — much of China's territory is desert, high plateau and mountain — so India edges ahead of China on this measure even though China is by far the larger country by total area.

• (a)India – China – Brazil — Puts Brazil last, which reverses the strongest fact in the item. Brazil's figure is more than twice India's and more than three times China's, so it cannot be at the bottom of any ranking of this kind.
• (b)China – Brazil – India — Places China first, which confuses total land area with arable land per person. China's arable land per person is the lowest of the three, because a very large share of its territory — the Tibetan plateau, the Gobi and Taklamakan, the western mountains — cannot be cropped at all.
• (c)Brazil – China – India — The closest near-miss. It gets Brazil right at the top but swaps the other two. India's arable land per person is roughly half as much again as China's, so India belongs in the middle position, not at the bottom.

Arable land is land under temporary crops, temporary meadows, market and kitchen gardens and land temporarily fallow. Arable land per person simply divides that area by the country's population, and it is a standard measure of how much cropping capacity a country has relative to the mouths it must feed. A country can score low either because it has little cultivable land or because it has a very large population, and China and India illustrate the two sides of that.

The routine mistake here is to rank by country size. China and Brazil are both far larger than India in total area, yet India comfortably outranks China on arable land per person, because a much higher share of India's territory is actually cultivable — the Indo-Gangetic plain and the peninsular plateaus are broadly farmable, while China's western half largely is not. Anchoring to the 2016 exam: the figures quoted here are for 2015, close to the exam date. In the decade since, the direction of drift has been the same everywhere — all three figures have slipped as populations grew, with India's falling from about 0·12 to lower levels and China's from about 0·08 — but the ordering Brazil, India, China has not changed.

• Arable land per person in 2015: Brazil about 0·270 hectares, India about 0·118 hectares, China about 0·083 hectares.
• Arable land covers land under temporary crops, temporary meadows and pasture, market and kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow.
• India has a larger absolute arable area than Brazil, but a population several times bigger, so its per-person figure is far smaller.
• China's total area exceeds India's several times over, yet much of it is desert, plateau and mountain, which is why its arable land per person is the lowest of the three.

• Ranking by total area of the country rather than by arable land per person.
• Assuming the bigger population always means the smaller per-person figure; India beats China here despite a comparable population, because its cultivable share is much higher.
• Confusing arable land with total agricultural land, which also includes permanent pasture and orchards.

NDA is fond of three-country or four-state descending-order items, and they are almost always decided by one lopsided fact — here, that Brazil's figure is more than double India's — so find that fact and eliminate on it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Physiological density of a country is obtained by dividing

  • (a)total population by total area
  • (b)total population by net cultivable area
  • (c)agricultural population by net cultivable area
  • (d)urban population by built-up area

  Answer(b) total population by net cultivable area — it measures the pressure of the whole population on the land that can actually be cropped.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following best explains why China's arable land per person is lower than India's?

  • (a)China has a much smaller total land area than India
  • (b)A large part of China's territory is desert, plateau and mountain and cannot be cropped
  • (c)China does not practise agriculture in its eastern provinces
  • (d)China's population is more than ten times India's

  Answer(b) A large part of China's territory is desert, plateau and mountain and cannot be cropped — China is far larger than India in total area but has a much smaller cultivable share.