Read the following passage and answer the question that follows. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.
Policymakers and media have placed the blame for skyrocketing food prices on a variety of factors, including high fuel prices, bad weather in key food producing countries, and the diversion of land to non-food production. Increased emphasis, however, has been placed on a surge in demand for food from the most populous emerging economics. It seems highly probable that mass consumption in these countries could be well poised to create a food crisis.
With reference to the above passage, the following assumptions have been made:
1. Oil producing countries are one of the reasons for high food prices.
2. If there is a food crisis in the world in the near future, it will be in the emerging economies.
Which of the above assumptions is/are valid?
Read the following passage and answer the question that follows. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.
A central message of modern development economics is the importance of income growth, by which is meant growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In theory, rising GDP creates employment and investment opportunities. As incomes grow in a country where the level of GDP was once low, households, communities, and governments are increasingly able to set aside some funds for the production of things that make for a good life. Today GDP has assumed such a significant place in the development lexicon, that if someone mentions "economic growth", we know they mean growth in GDP.
With reference to the above passage, the following assumptions have been made:
1. Rising GDP is essential for a country to be a developed country.
2. Rising GDP guarantees a reasonable distribution of income to all households.
Which of the above assumptions is/are valid?
Read the following passage and answer the question that follows. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.
Researchers simulated street lighting on artificial grassland plots containing pea-aphids, sap-sucking insects, at night. These were exposed to two different types of light - a white light similar to newer commercial LED lights and an amber light similar to sodium street lamps. The low intensity amber light was shown to inhibit, rather than induce, flowering in a wild plant of the pea family which is a source of food for the pea-aphids in grasslands. The number of aphids was also significantly suppressed under the light treatment due to the limited amount of food available.
Which one of the following statements best reflects the most critical inference that can be made from the passage given above?
Read the following passage and answer the question that follows. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.
Approximately 80 percent of all flowering plant species are pollinated by animals, including birds and mammals, but the main pollinators are insects. Pollination is responsible for providing us with a wide variety of food, as well as many plant-derived medicines. At least one-third of the world’s agricultural crops depend upon pollination. Bees are the most dominant taxa when it comes to pollination and they are crucial to more than four hundred crops. Pollination is an essential service that is the result of intricate relationships between plants and animals, and the reduction or loss of either affects the survival of both. Effective pollination requires resources, such as refuges of pristine natural vegetation.
On the basis of the passage given above, the following assumptions have been made:
1. Sustainable production of India’s cereal food grains is impossible without the diversity of pollinating animals.
2. Monoculture of horticultural crops hampers the survival of insects.
3. Pollinators become scarce in cultivated areas devoid of natural vegetation.
4. Diversity in insects induces diversity of plants.
Which of the above assumptions is/are valid?