Read the passage below carefully and answer the question that follows:
For centuries, shea butter extraction in Nigeria’s Niger State remained an arduous, manual process dominated by rural women who gathered fallen nuts, roasted them over open firewood pits, and kneaded the oil by hand. While yielding high-grade unrefined butter, the method consumed massive quantities of fuelwood and exposed processors to persistent smoke inhalation. Recently, micro-credit schemes enabled several cooperatives to acquire solar-powered mechanical crushers and hydraulic presses. Surprisingly, while overall output tripled and deforestation rates dropped significantly in participating villages, younger women in these communities reported lower participation rates in co-op governance meetings. Researchers observed that the shift from communal open-air roasting pits—which had historically doubled as social forums for mentoring and dispute resolution—to automated processing sheds fragmented traditional communication channels. Consequently, elder women retained exclusive control over executive decisions, treating the machinery as proprietary heritage rather than shared infrastructure. The technological transition, while economically and environmentally transformative, unintentionally disrupted the socio-cultural mechanisms that previously fostered inclusive leadership among successive generations of female processors.
Which of the following can be logically inferred from the passage regarding the impact of technological modernization on the cooperative?
- It weakened informal avenues through which younger members acquired civic engagement and leadership skills.Answer
- BIt caused a reduction in the purity and market quality of the shea butter produced.
- CThe elder women refused to adopt hydraulic presses because open-air roasting was culturally mandatory.
- DThe primary objective of introducing micro-credit schemes was to resolve internal co-op executive disputes.