the following appeared in a letter to the editor of a Batavia newspaper."The department of agriculture in Batavia reports that the number of dairy farms throughout the country is now 25 percent greater than it was 10 years ago. During this same time perio

The person who wrote the letter observes an increase in both the number of dairy farms and the prices of milk. They conclude that these farms must be getting more profits than they should, because with more farms the prices should drop. There could be several other reasons why this is the case, and it is probably a mix of several:

Most importantly, the milk that we buy today might not be the same as it was 10 years ago. Milk needs to be treated so that it can be rated safe for consumption. The procedures on how to do it could have changed during these years. Some practices might be enforced more effectively today, and some practices may have been banned for safety, humane or other reasons.

Also, $1 today is not the same as $1 from 10 years ago. Of course, inflation does not usually halve the value of currency in 10 years, but it could be part of the reason why prices have increased.

Of course, it could also be that prices are artificially inflated, and that most farmers agree to do it. However, the increase in the number of farms makes this less likely, not more. More farms means more competition, which pushes farmers to drop their prices. All it takes is one farm to not agree to do this, and the whole conspiracy would be foiled.

Plus, the farmers aren't the ones who decide what price you pay at the store. The middleman is usually the one who rises the price the most from farm to store. Maybe nowadays milk is imported from further away, or it is distributed by only a few companies, and those companies are the ones artificially inflating their prices.

In conclusion, to figure out why the prices have risen, we should look not only at the farmers, but also at the milk itself and the middleman. Until we have that information, all we can do is speculate.

Votes
Average: 8.3 (3 votes)
Essay Categories

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 6, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...afety, humane or other reasons. Also, today is not the same as from 10 years ...
^^
Line 5, column 32, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...sons. Also, today is not the same as from 10 years ago. Of course, inflation ...
^^
Line 8, column 19, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: aren't
...acy would be foiled. Plus, the farmers arent the ones who decide what price you pay ...
^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, look, may, so, in conclusion, of course

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 32.0 55.5748502994 58% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 4.0 16.3942115768 24% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1466.0 2260.96107784 65% => OK
No of words: 325.0 441.139720559 74% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.51076923077 5.12650576532 88% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.24591054749 4.56307096286 93% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.32485108004 2.78398813304 84% => OK
Unique words: 167.0 204.123752495 82% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.513846153846 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 456.3 705.55239521 65% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.4 1.59920159681 88% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 8.0 1.67365269461 478% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 38.5212833815 57.8364921388 67% => OK
Chars per sentence: 86.2352941176 119.503703932 72% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.1176470588 23.324526521 82% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.70588235294 5.70786347227 65% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.10498565032 0.218282227539 48% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0411835688293 0.0743258471296 55% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0492485867682 0.0701772020484 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0574337696668 0.128457276422 45% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0388306871602 0.0628817314937 62% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 9.4 14.3799401198 65% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 69.11 48.3550499002 143% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.3 12.197005988 68% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 8.88 12.5979740519 70% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.4 8.32208582834 89% => OK
difficult_words: 58.0 98.500998004 59% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?

---------------------

Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.

Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 328 350
No. of Characters: 1411 1500
No. of Different Words: 163 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.256 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.302 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.212 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 75 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 48 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 31 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 21 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.222 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.894 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.389 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.31 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.545 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.113 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5