Help

I'm sorry I meant between 'A' and 'D'

@zcrabill hey man! not an instructor or anything, but it looks like we took the diagnostic at the same time. when i came across this question i viewed it very similarly to you. the issue i found with A is that the stimulus never mentions that the "nations recent crisis" was preceded by insufficient rain. all it mentions is "Records indicate that during a certain nations recent crisis, faltering crops and rising agricultural prices prompted the government.... in an effort to prevent starvation". So the authors argument is flawed because the conclusion jumps to "insufficient rain" being the cause of the nations recent crisis, when all we know from the stimulus is that "insufficient rain CAN cause crops to falter and agricultural prices to raise", not that it HAS to or DOES. hope this helps man! we're all in this together haha, happy studying

A is making the assumption that insufficient rain happened, when that isn't necessarily the case. Weather/insufficient rain is what the argument is trying to conclude happened. We know that faltering crops happened before the crisis, but not that insufficient rain happened. Maybe it was actually a agricultural worker strike that caused the crops to falter? Maybe all the domesticated animals died of disease and were unable to till the land? It could be anything. D points this out! It says that we're assuming it was weather that caused the faltering crops & raising agricultural prices. Does that help?

Thanks for the help guys.