Analyzing Foley's Article 'Solutions For A Roof Planet'

The Capture of an Audience through Writing The ability to capture an audience through writing is a major focus for authors. Writers have to consider who their audience may be, ways to appeal to that audience, and also how to persuade the audience into their arguments. These three main ideas apply to authors of all types of styles of writing. However, this essay centers around the ways that Johnathan A. Foley captures and convinces his audience in his journal article entitled, “Solutions for a cultivated planet”. Foley directed his audience for this article to the people of the community of science. In the journal article, Foley (2011) stated, “Looking forward, we face one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century: meeting society’s growing food needs while simultaneously reducing agriculture’s environmental harm” (p.337). In this quotation, Foley compared the word we to the word society. These word choices indicated that the word we referred to the science community and the word society referred to the people on Earth as a whole. Therefore, the audience in which Foley delivered his message to was

One of Foley’s arguments was the explanation of the state of global agriculture (Foley, 2011, 337). To support his argument, he explained that agriculture occupies “the largest use of land on the planet” and is increasing at a slow rate (Foley, 2011, p. 337). He also talked about how global crop production has increased in the recent decades (Foley, 2011, p.337). Foley (2011) then stated, “North America and Europe devote only about 40% of their croplands to direct food production” (p.338). This statement proved that a large amount of crops are grown for livestock purposes, not for direct human use (Foley, 2011, p.338). From the statements above, a reader could infer that the state of global agriculture has room for improvement in the areas of sustainability and productivity (Foley, 2011,