Numerical answer
The four sentences below, labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4, can be arranged into a coherent paragraph. Decide the correct order.
1. Yet within a decade, refrigerated rail cars and steamships had turned meat, fruit and dairy into globally tradable commodities.
2. Before the advent of mechanical refrigeration in the late nineteenth century, most food had to be consumed close to where it was produced.
3. This single technological shift reorganised agricultural economies on multiple continents, as regions began farming for distant markets rather than local subsistence.
4. Perishability set a hard limit on how far a farmer's produce could travel before spoiling and losing its value.
1. Yet within a decade, refrigerated rail cars and steamships had turned meat, fruit and dairy into globally tradable commodities.
2. Before the advent of mechanical refrigeration in the late nineteenth century, most food had to be consumed close to where it was produced.
3. This single technological shift reorganised agricultural economies on multiple continents, as regions began farming for distant markets rather than local subsistence.
4. Perishability set a hard limit on how far a farmer's produce could travel before spoiling and losing its value.
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Answer: 2431
Sentence 2 introduces the pre-refrigeration era as the starting point. Sentence 4 explains WHY that era had limits (perishability). Sentence 1 introduces the change ('Yet within a decade...') that overturns the limit described in 4. Sentence 3 concludes with the broader consequence ('This single technological shift...'). The chain 2→4→1→3 moves from context, to constraint, to change, to consequence.
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