The article “Our weather is on steroids. For agriculture to succeed, both farmers and governments need to act” was published on August 12th, 2021, by Ian McCreary, a farmer from the region of Bladworth in Sask. In the article, McCreary (2021) points out that farmers need to take action to help reduce the impact of climate change on agriculture. According to the author, farmers must take three actions: improve resilience, reduce emissions, and get government support. McCreary wants to persuade an audience familiar with the field described to agree with ideas about reducing the impact on agriculture; the author has the knowledge and experience evident in his work.
Ian McCreary (2021) uses rhetorical appeals (Ethos, Pathos, and Logos) to influence readers to agree with his ideas on how to help reduce the impact of climate change on agriculture. First, he uses Ethos showing credibility for being a farmer, meaning that he has the experience and knowledge required to talk about agriculture. For instance, McCreary (2012) shows knowledge and experience on the subject when he points out the problems and achievements of the sector and ways to improve cultivation and harvesting. As an example, he cites some measures taken that helped to improve not only the quality of soil for cultivation but also the environment (para. 12). In addition, he gives some ideas on how to make use of these improvements, such as when he states that “early harvest in 2021 can be a great opportunity to try cover crops if August brings adequate rainfall to germinate newly planted seeds” (para. 13). Similarly, the author uses emotional appeal (Pathos) to get the reader’s attention. To illustrate, on the first 3 paragraphs, McCreary (2021) stirs the reader’s emotions by stating that the summer of 2021 will again be challenging for Prairie farmers (para. 1), and the heat and lack of rain will break drought records this year (para. 3). In the same way, McCreary (2021) appeals to reasoning (Logos) providing logical arguments and facts such as telling that a similar drought occurred in 1988, but today’s growing conditions are improved (para. 11).
Moreover, McCreary (2021) provides effective arguments to support his ideas. At the beginning of the article, he shows how climate change has negatively impacted agriculture, using as an example crops that are being harmed by the intense heat, winds, low humidity, and fire hazards (para. 2). In the same way, the author makes an analogy between steroids and climate change, to support his idea in how climate change intensifies hot days (para. 5-6). Another example, McCreary (2021) claims that farmers need to continue to improve their resilience (para. 10). To support this idea, he gives examples of improvements in agriculture and offers solutions for further improvement, for instance, when he says that “in forage, more cross fences and tighter rotations can further improve grazing and resilience” (para. 13). If on the one hand, the author can provide good arguments to support his point of view, on the other, he cannot support them with examples. For instance, McCreary (2021) argues that farmers need to interact and get government support (paragraph 17). He points out that clear goals must be set by the government to support farmers and make changes (paragraph 18). However, the author does not provide examples of what these goals would be and what would be like changes to be made. In my opinion, a good example would be to show readers how the government could help farmers and what types of investments would be needed for them to achieve their goals. Furthermore, when McCreary (2021) says that to be successful, farmers must pressure the government to invest in agriculture (para. 19), he may seem biased because, as a farmer, if the government invests in improvements in the agricultural sector, he will be benefited. He did not specify what the benefits to the environment will be, nor did he say what these improvements would bring in terms of benefits to improve climate change.
Finally, McCreary (2021) uses some Logos to persuade the audience, but they lack sources and references to support his arguments. For example, when the author states that “the drought of 2021 will break records in many areas for both heat and lack of rainfall” (McCreary, 2021, para. 3), he fails to provide the source. Some questions come to mind, like, how does he know the drought will break records? Who said this? Is this information accurate? The same occurs in the following paragraphs, where the author talks about climate change. McCreary (2021) informs that the science is clear that climate change will make hot days more intense and more frequent (para. 6); however, the author did not mention where he got this information. Moreover, the author cites a Prairie drought that occurred in 1988 and compares it with the drought in 2021 (para. 11). This leaves readers with some doubts about where the author got this information. Was McCreary already working with agriculture in 1988, and this information is about his own experience, or did he get this information from some source? Anyway, in both cases, information about the source was lacking.
To conclude, McCreary (2021), being a farmer, wrote this article to persuade other farmers to agree with his ideas on how to improve work in the agricultural sector while helping to lessen the effects of climate change. For this, the author used rhetorical strategies to make him believable and arouse readers’ emotions. The author also supported his points of view with good arguments; however, at times, he failed to support these arguments with examples and failed to cite the sources to support evidence for his arguments. Although the article is aimed at farmers and the actions they should take, it is worth reading and should be of interest to everyone. We do not need to be in the agricultural business to notice climate change. It is our future and well-being we are talking about. We must all ask ourselves how local governments are dealing with this issue of climate change and what we can do to help reduce its effects.
Reference
McCreary, I. (2021). “Our weather is on steroids. For agriculture to succeed, both farmers and governments need to act”. Saskatchewan, Canada. Web.