Writer's Blog Post: On Buying Local Pg 92

1. Katherine Spriggs, the author of On Buying Local, has lead me to believe that her position supporting buying locally grown produce is an important one. She does this by bringing up issues that involve the environment of the whole world. Examples of these include the receding amounts of fossil fuels, global warming, and pollution. Each of these problems affect every person that lives on the earth, including me, leading me to care about her argument. To make her reasons more reliable, she also include statistics and cites her sources. An example of this is when she says, “According to a CNN article published in 2000, the United States manufactures more than 1.5 billion pounds of pesticides each year that can pollute water, soil and air.” In saying this, she relates to modern society’s “go green” movement, creating even more context for me to relate to and care about.

2. Spriggs addresses multiple counter arguments in her essay. The first brings to our attention that it is not possible to grow every kind of food in all of the various environments of the world, and is linked to the argument that trying to grow foods in their unnatural habitat will hurt the environment more than importing it from elsewhere. To respond to these arguments, Spriggs calmly gives a clarification to her stance, saying that we should "focus on buying as much as possible from nearby farmers." The next argument states, "that buying locally will be detrimental to the environment because small farms are not as efficient  in their use of resources as large farms." To counter act this, the author explains that, though large farms may produce more, faster, of one type of crop than small farms, small farms are more advantageous with all of their crops. Spriggs continues to explain the truth in her position when she conquers the next argument. This argument says that there could be harmful world wide effects, such as job loss, if we revert to buying locally grown goods. She explains the truthfulness of the job loss situation, but then responds to it by offering the equally good consequence of furthering The United States' stance and appearance on supporting environment awareness. The last argument that she takes care of is that of economy. Though she accepts the fact that naturally grown food can be a little bit more expensive in some circumstances, she retorts with a challenging statement about how it is the use of underpaid immigrants that most often results in the cheaper produce. This statement in and of itself is likely to clamp the arguer's lips shut and turn his audience against him. She also states that the immediate community of the locally grown, small farm, produce is likely to increase in economic stability, as they will be hiring local workers, and therefore increasing the local money pool. She provides statisics such as "20 percent higher local retail sales," to support her response. 

3. An especially effective part in her essay is the all the way from the bottom of page ninety-six, through the top of page ninety-nine. Throughout this whole section, Spriggs is addressing and refuting argument after argument that are stated against her claim. The fact that she is able to eloquently explain each of these, proves her authority to speak on the topic.  She does this by providing reliable evidence, such as statistics. Additionally, she appeals to the beliefs and values of the readers as in this example, "Labor is cheap in third world countries, and large U.S. farms are notorious for hiring immigrant laborers. It is hard to justify the exploitations of such artificially cheap labor." This automatically turns the audience's support to Spriggs, as it proves the opposition to be dishonest.

4.  The pictures in Spiggs essay create even more of an appeal to her argument. The photos of the large and static looking farms creates a feeling of intimidation. the tightly packed rows of repetitious plants creates a feeling of nausea. The image of the long line of semi truck brings to people's attention the gross rip there veggies have been on, making the produce less appealing. The picture of the winter squash however is full of color and corrdinates with the truck in the background. The author uses these images to create support for her argument.