Many farmers who invested in the equipment needed to make the switch from synthetic to organic fertilizers and pesticides feel that it would be too expensive to resume synthetic farming at this point. But studies of farmers who switched to organic farming

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Many farmers who invested in the equipment needed to make the switch from synthetic to organic fertilizers and pesticides feel that it would be too expensive to resume synthetic farming at this point. But studies of farmers who switched to organic farming last year indicate that their current crop yields are lower. Hence their purchase of organic farming equipment, a relatively minor investment compared to the losses that would result from continued lower crop yields, cannot justify persisting on an unwise course. And the choice to farm organically is financially unwise, given that it was motivated by environmental rather than economic concerns.”

Discuss how well reasoned is the argument.

The aforementioned argument asserts that farming organically led to lower crop yields last year and hence is financially unwise choice to make.At first glance the argument appears to be fairly convincing and coherent. However, upon closer examination, a number of flaws become evident to such an extent that neither the argument nor the conclusion can be taken seriously. Among the most pivotal of the argument's shortcomings is its inability to recognise or even acknowledge the assumptions as well as the negligence of the information required to substantiate its claims.

The primary pitfall of the argument is that the spokesperson attributes the lower crop yield only to the organic pesticides and fertilisers. He inadvertently assumes that there could be no other reason for such low yields. Various other factors apart from fertilisers and pesticides decide the final outcome of the crop yield. For instance, weather patterns or some kind of disease infecting the plants or changed soil composition etc. Furthermore, he tries to imply that sudden change in the farming technique will give better results immediately.

Additionally the spokesperson of the Synthetic Farms tries to make statement regarding the financial unwise choice for opting the organic pesticides and fertilisers over the synthetic ones. On the contrary, recent trends suggest that people today are more inclined to buy organic vegetables rather than opt for the synthetically produced ones. Some are even willing to shell out extra bucks for it.The reason being , not just the environmental problems but also health related problems. Many accredited studies and surveys have shown organically grown vegetables to be healthier than the synthetically produced ones. So technically, even if a farmer gets lower crop yields, his chances of making higher profits in comparison the the farmer producing synthetic vegetables is higher.

Although the argument lies on questionable assumptions and premises, it would be presumptuous to say that the argument as a whole is baseless.If the spokesperson of Synthetic Daily Farm wants to convince the listeners of the argument's conclusion, he will have to take steps to to remedy the fallacies mentioned in the paragraphs above.Possibly, if the spokesperson could just dig deeper to know the actual causes for the lower crop yield for the particular region he talked about and not try to make a general statement for all, would help getting better insight of the highlighted problem. Also, the details of the studies mentioned by him, such as the parameters taken into consideration or the sample size of the lot will be helpful to understand the argument properly.

In a nutshell, the argument made by the spokesperson is poorly articulated and unacceptable. He will find it difficult to make his audience believe the validity of it ,unless he takes necessary measure to address the fallacies in his argument.

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2017-09-09 garimarajkumar 50 view
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Comments

argument 1 -- OK

argument 2 -- not OK. we can't use other studies or surveys to prove this one is wrong.

argument 3 -- not OK. It is not an argument, it can be put on conclusion.

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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 465 350
No. of Characters: 2425 1500
No. of Different Words: 253 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.644 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.215 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.952 2.4
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No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 141 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 103 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 75 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.353 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 15.549 7.5
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Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.312 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.562 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.107 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5