| Among the reasons for the decline of New England agriculture in the last three decades were the high cost of land, the pressure of housing and commercial development, and basing a marketing and distribution system on importing produce from Florida and California. | |||
| a) A. basing a marketing and distribution system on importing produce from Florida and California | |||
| b) B. basing a marketing and distribution system on the imported produce of Florida and California | |||
| c) C. basing a system of marketing and distribution on the import of produce from Florida and California | |||
| d) D. a marketing and distribution system based on importing produce from Florida and California | |||
| e) E. a marketing and distribution system importing produce from Florida and California as its base | |||
This is yet another question on the Writing section which tests your understanding of grammatical parallelism. When you have a series of items, each element within the series has to be in the same grammatical form. The first element here is “the high cost of land,” the second is “the pressure of housing,” and the third is “basing a . . .California.” The first two begin basic nouns while the third begins with a gerund (basing). We can automatically rule out (A), (B), and (C) as options because of this. Of the two remaining choices, it is clear that (D) is the better choice. The answer is (D).
source: testprep.about.com
