Reading comprehension · solved example
A crop insurance scheme is usually judged by how much it pays. A more revealing test is how quickly. A farmer whose claim is settled six months after a failed harvest has already borrowed to plant the next one, and has done so at whatever rate the local lender set, which is rarely the rate the scheme was meant to spare him. The payout, when it arrives, retires that debt rather than financing the sowing it was designed to protect. The money is not wasted, but its purpose has been quietly inverted.
Delay is built into the way losses are measured. Most schemes settle on the basis of crop-cutting experiments, in which sample harvests across a block are weighed and the average yield compared with a threshold. The method is defensible, and it is slow: it needs field staff, a harvest to sample, and a chain of approvals afterwards. Satellite assessment promises speed, and pilots have cut settlement times sharply, but it estimates area-wide vegetation rather than an individual field's yield, so a farmer whose own plot failed in a block that did well is left uncompensated and unconvinced. Faster settlement is therefore not simply a matter of better technology. It requires deciding whose loss the scheme insures: the block's, which can be measured quickly, or the farm's, which cannot.
What limitation of satellite assessment does the passage identify?
- It is considerably more expensive than crop-cutting experiments.
- It has not yet been tested anywhere in the field.
- It requires more field staff than the method it would replace.
- It measures vegetation across an area rather than the yield of a particular field.Correct
- It cannot be used until the harvest is complete.
Solution
The passage grants that satellite assessment is fast and that pilots have cut settlement times sharply, then names its one drawback: it estimates area-wide vegetation rather than an individual field's yield, which is why a farmer whose own plot failed inside a successful block goes uncompensated. Option B contradicts the reference to pilots. Options A and C are the kinds of objection one might expect, but the passage raises neither, and C describes the older method's requirement, not the new one's. Option E belongs to crop-cutting experiments, which need a harvest to sample.