Question

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.

Pig farmers keep their flitches of bacon back in storage until they can get a better price for them later in the winter. Such tactics are made even more profitable by the unhappy fact that harvests can fail, causing local—and sometimes national—food shortages. Large towns are less vulnerable, being part of an international market that sees preserved foods traded long-distance; but much of the countryside is dependent on fresh food. After a poor harvest, prices for all commodities—not just grain—rise dramatically and the poor are unable to make ends meet.

Which detail from the excerpt best supports the inference that food was more consistently available in larger towns?

Pig farmers keep their flitches of bacon back in storage until they can get a better price for them later in the winter.
Such tactics are made even more profitable by the unhappy fact that harvests can fail, causing local—and sometimes national—food shortages.
Large towns are less vulnerable, being part of an international market that sees preserved foods traded long-distance; but much of the countryside is dependent on fresh food.
After a poor harvest, prices for all commodities—not just grain—rise dramatically and the poor are unable to make ends meet.

Answer 1

"Large towns are less vulnerable, being part of an international market that sees preserved foods traded long-distance."

This detail explains that towns could draw on long-distance supplies of preserved food, so they had more consistent access to food than the countryside, which relied on fresh local produce.