Dairy farmer: On our farm, we have great concern for our cows' environmental conditions. We have recently made impro...

Jacob-R on February 11, 2019

Hi Jessica-Killeen,

I’m happy to help. Before diving in to why it is B and not E, let’s take a look at the question stem. We are looking for the proposition that is best illustrated by the farmer’s statements.

What were those statements? The farmer makes clear that on their farm, they have great concern for cows’ environmental conditions, and that they have made improvements that increase cow comfort, such as special sleeping mattresses. Those changes are intended to increase blood flow to the udder, and this blood flow would boost milk output and increase profits.

Answer E states that the KEY to maximizing profits on a dairy farm is having concern for cows’ environment. Is this statement really “illustrated” by the dairy farmer’s statements? No, because the farmer didn’t indicate that the “key” to “maximizing” profits is having concern for the cows’ environment. Perhaps the key to truly maximizing profits would be to cram cows in to horrible environmental conditions. Instead, at most what is illustrated by what the farmer is saying is that it is possible to both increase profits and have concern for cows’ environmental conditions.

And that is much close to what answer B says! That answer says that practices introduced for the sake of maximizing profits “can” improve the lives of farm animals. While the farmers statements seem to go in the opposite direction (that practices introduced for the sake of improving environmental conditions can also increase profits), the statement is still “illustrated” by the farmer’s statements, as the stem requires.

A quick general note: whenever you see answer options that use extreme language, like “key” or “always” or “necessarily” be on your guard! The LSAT writers like to mismatch those sort of extreme statements with more moderated assertions in a given passage, and then test you on the mismatch. This question was a great example of that.

I hope this helps! Please let us know if you have further questions.

mamie on December 15, 2019

Could you please tell me what type of question this is? I spent a bit of time trying to figure that out so I could understand the best way to attack the question.

shafieiava on December 24, 2019

@mamie I believe this is an illustration question!

shunhe on January 2, 2020

Hi @mamie and @shafieiava,

This one is kind of weird, but I'd probably classify it as a "principle" and a "must be true" question. Hope this helps!