hard · GMAT Verbal
Planting the same crop in a field year after year depletes the soil of nutrients that crop relies on and allows pest populations specialized to that crop to build up season over season. Rotating in a legume crop, which fixes atmospheric nitrogen into the soil, restores nitrogen levels while also starving out pests that cannot survive on the legume. A farmer who rotated corn with soybeans, a legume, every other year for a decade applied, on average, 40% less synthetic nitrogen fertilizer than a neighboring farmer who planted corn continuously on comparable soil, and also reported far fewer corn-rootworm infestations, a corn-specialist pest.
Which of the following can be most properly inferred from the passage?
- The rotating farmer needed absolutely no synthetic nitrogen fertilizer at all in any corn year whatsoever.
- Continuous corn planting actually increases the soil's nitrogen levels over successive growing seasons each year.
- Corn-rootworm populations build up on soybean crops just as readily and quickly as they do on continuous corn.
- The rotating farmer's soybean years reduced the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in later corn years.
- The rotating farmer's total corn yield clearly exceeded the continuous-corn farmer's yield over the entire decade.
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