Essay Rhetorical Summary Of Organic Farming

1310 Words3 Pages

Rhetorical Analysis: Organic Farming
In his article, “Organic Farming Healthier, More Efficient than Status Quo”, Anurag Muthyam, argues organic farming is a better farming method than conventional farming. He does so by first asking the audience where their food comes from drawing their interest into the topic. Throughout the article, Muthyam tells his audience about the potential good that can arise with choosing organic farming over conventional farming. Muthyam also explains the general concept of what is organic farming in the third paragraph after hooking the audience by telling them where their food comes from and how it is produced. After introducing the concept of organic farming, Muthyam goes on to compare and contrast organic farming …show more content…

His audience does know whether he is a college student at Kansas State University. The only thing that points to Muthyam being a college student in KSU is that the article was published in the Kansas State Collegian, the college newspaper of KSU. Muthyam does not state his credentials any where in the article, but he does bring in other experts in organic farming or similar backgrounds to support his claims. Muthyam used, “According to USDA organic certification…” when he was about to explain the general concept of organic farming and how to attain it. That is the strongest direct ethos Muthyam was able to provide to his audience. Muthyam explains to his audience in a clear and direct way about organic farming is which can be a form of ethos, unfortunately Muthyam was unable to provide a solid counterargument for organic farming or provide an argument for conventional farming. This decreases his appeal to ethos. Another thing that decreases Muthyam’s ethos is that he mentions KSU’s data for an example without specifying the department or give any actual data; same thing happened when he referenced Cornell University without stating the name of the study completed. Muthyam’s ethos was not as near as strong as his …show more content…

The target audience is in general college students due to the article being published in the Kansas State Collegian. Muthyam does give a general explanation of what organic farming is and how as a society can attain it. Muthyam does not address that his audience is also part of an agricultural school, typically from Kansas which is known as a farming state, and that many people of his audience come from a farming background which could mean that they know more about conventional and organic farming than him. Muthyam’s audience reduces to a small amount of college students who do not know much about either farming method. Muthyam also assumes that the audience dislikes the idea of having food as GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) which again the audience could be more knowledgeable than what Muthyam expected or gave them credit for. Muthyam did not provide any backing to the warrants he takes on in this article. In paragraph six and eight, Muthyam states several different things that have no significance to his claim. In paragraph six, Muthyam states that organic farming is the way to feed the world, but then states that people need to stop depending on industrial agriculture and should practice urban agriculture. Muthyam does not explain where or why industrial and urban agriculture have any significance to his claim about organic farming being the best course of action. Throughout the

Open Document