Weaken CR - Organic Farms

[gs.abhinav]

Although the organic farms in the agricultural community of Greendale are destined to shut down within the next decade as a result of competition from the organic mega-farm Full Foods, the farmland will not go unused for long. In the decade since the opening of OmniFoods, Inc., a non-organic farm conglomerate, a new owner has bought and reopened every farm in Greendale that has shut down due to competition with OmniFoods, Inc.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

A. Many customers of OmniFoods, Inc. are expected to buy less nonorganic food than they did before the Full Foods farm opened in Greendale.

B. The new farms that have opened in the agricultural community of Greendale since OmniFoods, Inc. opened have been primarily organic farms.

C. The agricultural community of Greendale currently has more different farms operating within its borders than it ever has before.

D. Many farms in Greendale sell produce that is not available to buy from either OmniFoods, Inc. or from Full Foods.

E. The demand for organic food is expected to increase at a faster rate over the next decade than at any time over the past fifty years.

OA: B

Source: Knewton.

Please explain your answer choice.

[george.kourdin]

bump...help

not sure about the answer here. best that i can come up with is that to weaken the conclusion we need to find a statement that would basically put into question that the new owner will buy and reopen every farm in greendale that was shut down. what would cause him to not buy and reopen the farms?

B is saying that there have been a lot of new organic farms that were opened. are we supposed to infer that this would mean that demand for organic farms will decrease/market is saturated with organic farms, therefore the new owner that has been buying up the farms that were closing down will no longer continue to do that.

seems far-fetched, especially by GMAT standards....

[gs.abhinav]

Hey George, looks like IE prevailed this time :) its cruel on part of IT in your office not to provide firefox! Anyways even firefox is getting bloated now a days..move to Chrome I would say.

Back to the topic, yes you are correct: the objective is to show that the farmlands will remain unused. Your guess for B is also correct. But like you, even I was confused when it came to picking up B as the answer choice.

I reasoned that perhaps OmniFoods wouldn't want to buy organic farms because their primary business is non-organic food. Also organic farms are unlikely to shut down due to competition from OmniFoods, a non-organic farm producer. Therefore, the organic farms are unlikely to be used after they are shut down from competition from Full Foods, an organic farm producer.

But its a lot of reasoning :) on test day I wonder if I would be in my senses to reason that hard and pick the answer choice. Hopefully an expert on the board should comment on this question.

PS: Its a really tough GMAT q as per Knewton.

[george.kourdin]

bump for gmat pros to validate our logic....

[tim]

first, be careful bumping questions. every time you do that it puts the question at the absolute end of the queue for us to answer. bumping a question is the most effective way to cause a delay in getting your question answered..

this problem appears to be totally ripped off from OG#104. i have no way of knowing whether the reported source is accurate, but whoever wrote this question should be ashamed at their lack of creativity (not to mention their potential copyright violation). anyway, for a thorough explanation, see #104 in the OG and let us know if you have any further questions..

[george.kourdin]

habbit from poker forums

btw - i dont know how efficient your algo of answering posts in the order in which they were bumped/updated last. i guess it depends on what you define as efficient/what you are looking for. i suppose it does not favor someone who keeps bumping their own posts,however, perhaps there is a reason for why they are doing that. also, given a relatively significant amount of lag between when a thread is created and when a reply is posted by a MGMAT instructor, it may often be the case that a student that posted the thread either no longer needs/cares for the reply for whichever reason (forgot about the thread/too late/figured it out/no longer relevant etc.) thus, some of the attention is devoted to threads that no longer need replies.

obv your time is scarce and you guys are only human. just wondering what would be a better way to allocate your time and approach this. in an environment (the internet) where there is a ton of misinformation about this exam, opinions/replies of qualified instructors carry a ton of weight and are extremly valuable.

maybe you can restack questions based on date posted+number of views, where the latter takes precedence. sort of like hot topics....

[tim]

i appreciate the weight you place on our opinions, and i'm sure all of us would agree that the current system is not the best possible way to order the answers to questions, but that's the system that emerged for better or worse. i do appreciate your suggestions though, and would encourage you to send them to Manhattan GMAT directly (at the New York office). The people who make these sorts of policies don't check the forums, and you bring up some good ideas that shouldn't be left to wither here on the discussion board..