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CSAT 2016 paper

UPSC CSE CSAT 2016 · Question 68 · Reading comprehension

According to the above passage, which of the following are the fundamental solutions for the world…

Passage—5

Historically, the biggest challenge to world agriculture has been to achieve a balance between demand for and supply of food. At the level of individual countries, the demand-supply balance can be a critical policy issue for a closed economy, especially if it is a populous economy and its domestic agriculture is not growing sufficiently enough to ensure food supplies, on an enduring basis; it is not so much and not always, of a constraint for an open, and growing economy, which has adequate exchange surpluses to buy food abroad. For the world as a whole, supply-demand balance is always an inescapable prerequisite for warding off hunger and starvation. However, global availability of adequate supply does not necessarily mean that food would automatically move from countries of surplus to countries of deficit if the latter lack in purchasing power. The uneven distribution of hunger, starvation, under- or malnourishment, etc., at the world-level, thus owes itself to the presence of empty-pocket hungry mouths, overwhelmingly confined to the underdeveloped economies. Inasmuch as ‘a two-square meal’ is of elemental significance to basic human existence, the issue of worldwide supply of food has been gaining significance, in recent times, both because the quantum and the composition of demand has been undergoing big changes, and because, in recent years, the capabilities of individual countries to generate uninterrupted chain of food supplies have come under strain. Food production, marketing and prices, especially price-affordability by the poor in the developing world, have become global issues that need global thinking and global solutions.

CSAT 2016 · Q68

Reading comprehension Medium

According to the above passage, which of the following are the fundamental solutions for the world food security problem?

  1. 1.Setting up more agro-based industries
  2. 2.Improving the price affordability by the poor
  3. 3.Regulating the conditions of marketing
  4. 4.Providing food subsidy to one and all

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

Answer & explanation

Answer: (b) 2 and 3 only

The passage ends by naming 'food production, marketing and prices, especially price-affordability by the poor' as the global issues needing global solutions. Improving affordability for the poor and regulating marketing follow from this; agro-based industries and subsidies for everyone are never proposed.

  • ✗ 1. Agro-based industries are not mentioned.
  • ✓ 2. 'Especially price-affordability by the poor' — hunger comes from 'empty-pocket hungry mouths'.
  • ✓ 3. 'Food production, marketing and prices' are named as global issues needing global solutions.
  • ✗ 4. A subsidy 'to one and all' is not suggested; the concern is the poor who lack purchasing power.

Remember · For 'solutions according to the passage', use the issues it names in its conclusion; drop remedies it never proposes, especially sweeping ones.

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper II (2016, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). ·

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