Why do twentieth century advances not seem sustainable?
- (a)They do not meet the human needs
- (b)Due to the increased cost of agricultural production
- (c)Because they are outdated for the current times
- (d)They are useful, but intensive
Correct — B, due to the increased cost of agricultural production. The passage asks whether agricultural productivity can meet human needs in the long run and answers that 'twentieth century advances, given increasing costs, do not seem sustainable' — it is precisely those rising costs of raising farm output that make the earlier gains look unsustainable. Since the reason the passage ties to the phrase is cost, (b) is the option it supports.
- (a)They do not meet the human needs — The passage only asks whether productivity can meet human needs in the long run; it never says the advances fail to meet needs, and it pins non-sustainability on rising costs, not on any failure to meet needs.
- (c)Because they are outdated for the current times — Nothing in the passage calls the twentieth-century advances outdated or obsolete — the idea of them being out of date is not stated, so it is unsupported.
- (d)They are useful, but intensive — This is the tempting blind guess, but the passage attributes unsustainability to increasing costs, not to the advances being intensive; 'useful but intensive' is not the reason the text gives.
A reading-comprehension detail question — the passage attributes the non-sustainability of twentieth-century agricultural advances to their increasing costs.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In the passage, further increases in agricultural output will not be achieved easily mainly because —
- (a)the costs of raising output keep rising
- (b)farmers have stopped working the land
- (c)the human population is falling
- (d)governments have banned farming
Answer(a) the costs of raising output keep rising — the passage ties the limit on further gains to increasing costs.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The clause 'given increasing costs' in the passage is used to explain why —
- (a)the advances no longer seem sustainable
- (b)population growth has fully stopped
- (c)tropical forests have doubled
- (d)deserts have shrunk worldwide
Answer(a) the advances no longer seem sustainable — the clause links rising costs directly to the loss of sustainability.