The Blessings of Dirty Work by Barbara Kingsolver - Term Paper Example

.” However, what other people do not realize is that while this highly developed way of agriculture is promising to free the society from the loads of toiling the land it, at the same time, makes the lives of farmers more difficult and depressing and transforms people’s eating habits to an unhealthy way. In this line of argument, I find the article of Kingsolver highly effective in communicating the hidden costs of industrialized and centralized agriculture that we have nowadays through presenting a coherent, appealing, and factual article.

What is most remarkable in Kingsolver’s article is the manner she presented the points of her concern in her article. Unlike other articles which discuss another important issue, Kingsolver, in her writing did not limit herself in just plainly presenting facts and other information to corroborate her point about the hidden tolls of industrialized agriculture. Instead, she appealed to the emotion of her readers by stating depressing instances in India pertaining to the unseen or, maybe, unrealized effects of the highly advanced agricultural system contemporarily. Kingsolver mentioned her encounter with Vandana Shiva, the director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. In her encounter, she told her reader about the situation in India wherein the farmers are working hard to increase their harvest not for the locals but for people in other countries. To make the matter worse, these farmers are forced to grow commodities for export and not the products they are used to planting and growing. As a result, many Indian farmers commit suicide for not keeping up with the demands of today’s industrialized agriculture.

Kingsolver, again, appeals to her readers by stating another negative consequence of this industrialized agriculture. This negative consequence is, according to Kingsolver, actually masked in the form of convenience and easiness in terms of preparing food. However, in reality, this industrialized agriculture is teaching people to shift into other forms of food service that are not healthy.

Kingsolver’s use of conversational and not difficult words also helps in making the article effective in communicating its message to the readers. The article is written as if the author is just narrating a story. In the story, all the pieces of information, facts, and other data are embedded and this style of writing makes the article entertaining, easy to read, especially for ordinary people, and highly interesting.

On the other hand, I feel that Kingsolver fell short in providing more data, specifically quantitative data, to support her claim about the hidden costs of highly advanced agriculture. Sure that telling a story to prove one’s point makes the entire topic interesting; however, the validity of it might be questioned without sufficient data.