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Essay Locally Grown Produce

This essay is about locally grown produce and whether people should be encouraged to purchase only from local farms in order to improve the environment and economies. 

It was a recent exam question. Take a look at the question:

Today much of the food people eat gets transported from farms that are thousands of miles away. Some people believe it would be better for the environment and the economy if people only consumed food produced by local farmers.

Would the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?

Analysing the Question

You have to be careful with this question and make sure that you cover all the points that are presented in the prompt. 

it specifically mentions the environment and the economy so you must make sure you talk about these. If you don't the examiner may decide you have not covered all the parts of the question. 

Also the prompt is suggesting there are both advantages and disadvantages, so again it is a good ideas to mention both to ensure you have fully answered the question.

If you think though there are more disadvantages for example, you can present more support for this side as you believe they outweigh (i.e. there are more of them) the advantages.

Now take a look at the model answer below.

Locally Grown Produce for SaleLocally Grown Produce

Essay Locally Grown Produce

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Today much of the food people eat gets transported from farms that are thousands of miles away. Some people believe it would be better for the environment and the economy if people only consumed food produced by local farmers.

Would the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge.

Write at least 250 words.

Model Answer

These days food often travels many miles as farmers export their food around the world to satisfy consumer demand. Although some people think stopping this practice would benefit the economy and the environment, I believe that the negative impacts would not justify such a change.

The benefits of stopping the export of food are twofold. In relation to the environment, transporting food involves the use of thousands of lorries and many flights, which contributes to pollution given all the emissions this must produce everyday. This negatively affects people’s health and also may be leading to global warming. In addition to this, stopping the practice will mean that people then only buy local food, leading to a boost to local economies as farmers will become profitable as they sell more.

However, there are downsides to this. A problem is that these days many countries, particularly developing countries, rely on exports of their produce. Countries often have acres and acres of plantations and crops that are only sold to foreign markets, and this provides an income to the farmers but it also provides work for thousands of local people around the world working on farms. Furthermore, people these days have become dependent on ingredients from other countries and without it people could no longer cook or eat many of their favourite recipes and many restaurants that depend on food exports may go out of business.

On balance, I therefore believe that the advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages. Despite the fact that it may improve the environment, the negative economic impacts on farmers who export and their employees and the further impacts on food choices and restaurants would be too detrimental.

(279 Words)

Comments

This essay would get a high score for the following reasons. 

Firstly it has fully answered the question and the ideas presented in support of the question have been fully extended and explained. 

The first body paragraph presents the benefits of eating only locally grown produce or food, focusing on this in relation to the environment and the economy.

The second body paragraph then focuses on the possible negative impacts of this. It's ok to mention some other issues (e.g. the lack of choice for consumers) but the essay makes sure that again some environmental and economic issues are presented. 

The essay also has good coherence and cohesion. It is logically organised, easy to follow, and paragraphing has been used well.

Lexical resource (vocabulary) is also sufficient and accurate, with some good words and phrases, some of them topic related: 

  • contributes to pollution
  • negatively affects 
  • downsides
  • developing countries
  • acres of plantations
  • foreign markets
  • dependent on
  • negative economic impacts
  • detrimental

There is a also a good range of grammatical structures with high levels of accuracy. 

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