Farmers in developing countries claim that the United...

[renukaagarwal83]

GMAT Team -

I am having issues on the problem below:

"Farmers in developing countries claim that the United States government, through farm subsidies, is responsible for the artificially low global price of wheat. Because the U.S. government buys whatever wheat American farmers are unable to sell on the open market, American farmers have no incentive to modulate the size of their crops according to the needs of the global market. As a result, American farmers routinely produce more wheat than the global market can absorb and the global price of wheat is kept low. Without these subsidies, the farmers in developing economies claim, American farmers would produce only the amount of wheat that they could sell on the open market and the global price of wheat would rise.

Which of the following, if true, most weakens the claims of the farmers in developing countries regarding the price of wheat?

A. Wheat that is not processed for consumption is often used for certain industrial applications.
B. Non-governmental buyers of wheat and wheat products are able to predict how much wheat they will need several years in advance.
C. The United States government offers similar subsidies to soybean farmers, though the global price of soybeans is significantly higher than that of wheat.
D. Other countries, such as Canada and Russia, are likely to produce more wheat if the United States were to reduce its output.
E. The price of sorghum, a crop for which the United States government offers no subsidies, is lower than that of wheat.

Because the assumption is that government subsidies cause Americans to supply too much wheat, thereby pushing the global price down, I was looking for an answer choice that would indicate that the price of wheat would stay low even WITHOUT the government subsidies. To this end, I thought answer A made sense; if there are other uses of wheat, it is logical that Americans would continue to produce a large amount of wheat, even without subsidies.

The correct answer was D. While I can see why this answer makes sense, I don't see what makes it the definitely correct answer. Furthermore, I see it as quite similar to C and D.

Please explain - thank you!

[RonPurewal]

Choice A is irrelevant.
"What the global market can absorb" amounts to the grand total of ALL uses of wheat. It doesn't matter whether those uses are nutritional or industrial.

In other words, the effect of
"- Industrial use of X amount of wheat
"- People eating X amount of additional wheat
... is exactly the same.

Just think of the industrial applications as though they were more mouths to feed.

[RonPurewal]

The correct answer was D. While I can see why this answer makes sense, I don't see what makes it the definitely correct answer. Furthermore, I see it as quite similar to C and D.

Since D is the correct answer, I don't understand that part of your comment ("I see D as similar to D").

Choice C doesn't matter, because the difference in prices doesn't matter.
The passage is about whether the price would rise if the subsidies were removed.
If choice C said "The price of soybeans recently failed to rise when similar subsidies were removed", then it would be a good candidate.
But it doesn't say that"”it just compares the prices. That comparison has nothing to do with the effect of subsidies.