An international development organization, in response to a vitamin A deficiency among people in the impoverished nation of Tagus, has engineered a new breed of millet high in vitamin A. While seeds for this new type of millet cost more, farmers will be paid subsidies for farming the new variety of millet. Since millet is already a staple food in Tagus, people will readily adopt the new variety. To combat vitamin A deficiency, the government of Tagus should do everything it can to promote this new type of millet.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The argument states that the government of Tagus should do anything to promote the new type of millet among the citizens of Tagus in order to combat Vitamin A deficiency since it will be rich in vitamin A. However, there are numerous underlying assumptions to this argument that makes it faulty to some extent.
First and foremost, the newly engineered millet would not only contain Vitamin A but other food contents – such as carbohydrate. Millets are usually high in carbohydrate as they are grains. As such a major question arises on what will be the percentage of vitamin A content in the millet. The argument does not clearly state how much vitamin A content will there be in the millet per serving to determine whether it will be all encompassing to battle vitamin A deficiency when it is so likely that it will be rich in carbohydrate.
Secondly, the argument assumes that since millet is a staple food in Tagus, the citizens of Tagus will readily accept it. But the writer has not taken into consideration other factors that might determine people’s readiness to include the newly engineered millet as staple in their food habit. Such factors may be taste of the millet, market price of the millet, availability of the millet in the nearest grocery shop, variety of foods that can be prepared with it, etc. If the millet is not tasty enough, people will not readily include it as a staple for their daily meal. True that production of the millet will be subsidized but the argument provides no information on the market price of this millet – will the price be higher or lower than the millets currently available in the market. The argument would have been more persuading if it had included that the new millet will be tastier than the regular millets in the market and would be traded at a lower price than the ones available in the market thus making it more economical, healthier and tastier to consume.
Lastly, the argument mentions that the government will subsidize the production of the millet so that farmers are encouraged to grow them. However, what will be the size of subsidy that will be offered to the farmer? Would it be sufficient enough to cover costs and pull down the cost of production near to the cost involved in producing regular millet? If not, it is likely that the new millet will cost higher than regular millets and people will not be willing to opt for a costlier meal. Furthermore, subsidizing the millet production will call for higher costs for the government and tighter budget which is likely to be transferred to the people of Tagus via higher taxation. This is likely to create an aversion among people to accept the millet as their staple meal. In addition, the duration of the subsidy provided will also determine the length of time for which the millet production will be cost efficient for the farmers.
Due to the above unwarranted assumptions made by the writer, the argument fails to convince its readers why Tagus would readily accept the new millet as their staple food to reduce vitamin A deficiency and the government’s effort to make it acceptable to all households.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 541 350
No. of Characters: 2543 1500
No. of Different Words: 219 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.823 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.701 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.521 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 188 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 76 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 30.056 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.235 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.368 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.57 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.137 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 80, Rule ID: A_BUT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'a bit'?
Suggestion: A bit
...d millet would not only contain Vitamin A but other food contents – such as carbohydr...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 191, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “As” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...igh in carbohydrate as they are grains. As such a major question arises on what wi...
^^
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... that it will be rich in carbohydrate. Secondly, the argument assumes that sinc...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, lastly, may, second, secondly, so, thus, in addition, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 27.0 12.9520958084 208% => Less auxiliary verb wanted.
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2609.0 2260.96107784 115% => OK
No of words: 543.0 441.139720559 123% => OK
Chars per words: 4.80478821363 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.82725184711 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.62674630805 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 221.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.406998158379 0.468620217663 87% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 823.5 705.55239521 117% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.7273035212 57.8364921388 107% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.45 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.15 23.324526521 116% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.25 5.70786347227 92% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.424774696856 0.218282227539 195% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.157427632472 0.0743258471296 212% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0647630712862 0.0701772020484 92% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.254501128408 0.128457276422 198% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0643296165295 0.0628817314937 102% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.8 14.3799401198 103% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 52.53 48.3550499002 109% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.6 12.197005988 103% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.86 12.5979740519 86% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.09 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 107.0 98.500998004 109% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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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.