Blog assignment #8

Editorial:
What does the phrase “locally grown” mean to you? For some it’s a phrase that’s thrown around into free-loving hippy connotations. But the truth is that one does not have to be an earthy bohemian to support local farmers. In fact, the whole community needs to be on the bandwagon. It’s America’s farmers who put the bread on the table for us. Most of us do not have the talent, patience, and will to make our own food. We depend on other people to do it for us. Therefore shouldn’t we be more appreciative for those who literally keep us alive? But supporting local farmers also allows for other benefits as well. Buying from local farms allows for less distance traveled to get to your home. This in turn decreases the amount of carbon emissions that releases into the atmosphere. By shopping locally, your also helping out the environment. That’s two birds with one stone. Why not shop locally? When you shop locally, you are actually knowing where your food comes from. You have access to all kinds of information that can be essential to your health like whether or not your food was treated with hormones or chemicals But if your still not convinced how this can really make a difference or what’s in it for you, how about a monetary incentive? By shopping locally you stimulate the economy which in turn means you get a bigger paycheck. Everybody wins. There is a website called Local Harvest. The link is :
http://www.localharvest.org/events.jsp. This is an excellent site that you can have access to all sorts of information regarding farming events and local farms in your area. There is a newsletter that gives recent information. There is even a blog that you can talk to other people about farming related issues. The bottom line is to get informed. Know who your local farmers are. Support them. Educate others. Do something.

Rhetorical Situation:
The reason I chose the topic of supporting local farmers is because it is something I care about. This wave of the green movement is pretty recent. Shopping locally and living greener has been a hot topic. This helped in deciding what my topic was going to be. I also gave consideration in my tone of my editorial. I wanted to write in a way that would grab the reader and to keep them engaged. I did not want to “bore” them. By asking questions throughout, I kept that connection between the reader and I. This drew them in and presented a greater chance of them being persuaded by my editorial to support local farmers. I think that this editorial may appear in a newspaper. I have seen similar editorials like this. The audience that I will be writing to is a wide range of audience. There will be people of all different backgrounds possibly reading this. This is why I addressed to stereotypic image that shopping locally has created. I wanted to address this so open up a broader range of people. I would hope that people would have a desire to learn more about the local farms around where they live. I would hope that at least people would become more interested even if they did not actually shop locally. The ultimate goal would be though to get people to buying locally home grown products. Not only for the betterment for local farms. But for the betterment for the community and environment.