Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow: The loss in…
2024
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow:
The loss in earnings that farmers see due to extreme weather events or erratic seasonality is, by now, accepted as the most widely felt economic impact of climate change. Farmers were the first people to feel the impacts of climate change, which ultimately affects the country’s overall agricultural output and adds to food inflation. High food prices, in turn, could result in people slashing down consumption, which adversely impacts nutritional security.
A significant number of farming households produce food for their own consumption. These households have given birth to an old saying: those who eat their own food are the healthiest. In countries like India, where malnutrition is high and food insecurity is a nagging constant, such households have used the home production system to remain out of this crisis. As studies point out, these households are also protected from market fluctuations, thus ensuring that they can afford healthy food. Obviously, they are not impacted by food inflation either.
But there are serious conversations taking place over how climate change-induced extreme weather events would impact such households. We need to understand the link between nutrition intake and household food production, and whether weather fluctuations would have any impact on this. Researchers have analysed village level data from households with their own food production and consumption, and co-related this with the local weather conditions to infer whether there was a correlation. The paper establishes that people growing their own food consume more, thus adding to nutrition levels and attaining overall food security. There was also reduction in child stunting and underweight conditions as well as women achieving a normal body mass index. These trends are more pronounced in remote villages.
Some households have remained out of the crisis of food insecurity by adopting -
Answer: D. home production systems — Concept In a passage-based (reading comprehension) question, the correct option must be traceable to information the passage states directly about the…
- A.
high food prices
- B.
climate change conditions
- C.
protection from extreme weather conditions
- D.
home production systems
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept
In a passage-based (reading comprehension) question, the correct option must be traceable to information the passage states directly about the specific outcome the question asks about — not a generally related idea and not outside knowledge. The task is to locate the exact practice or mechanism the passage itself names as producing that outcome.
Application
The question asks what practice let some households escape the crisis of food insecurity. The second paragraph of the passage states plainly that households producing food for their own consumption relied on the ‘home production system’ to remain out of this crisis, and that this system also keeps them insulated from market fluctuations and food inflation. This is exactly the practice the answer option names, so ‘home production systems’ is the option supported by the passage.
Cross-check
‘High food prices’ is named in the first paragraph as a harmful consequence of climate-driven crop losses for the wider population — it is part of the crisis itself, not a practice any household adopts to escape it.
‘Climate change conditions’ is the external phenomenon driving the whole crisis in the first place; no household is described as ‘adopting’ the cause of the problem as its way out of it.
‘Protection from extreme weather conditions’ confuses the weather-related risk raised early in the passage with the coping practice discussed later — the safeguard the passage describes works through what a household grows and consumes, not through shielding itself from weather.
‘Home production systems’ matches the passage’s own wording for what let these households remain outside the crisis, confirming it as the answer.