The author uses a cause/effect text structure to demonstrate the complexity of farming. By explaining how plowing negatively impacts the soil and the various ecological functions it serves, the text reveals the intricate relationships between farming practices and their broader environmental and health implications.
"Industrial-Scale Farming,
Sustainable Path"
by Miriam Horn
Working with his dad and brother on land homesteaded by his maternal
great-grandparents just after the Civil War, Justin grew up hearing how
his grandmothers put wet tea towels in windows to try to keep out the
black blizzards of the Dust Bowl. Given responsibility for several fields
while still in high school, he'd watched his own soils blowing and
washing away, weeds running out of control and paltry yields. But it
wasn't until he went off to Kansas State University that he understood a
prime cause of that damage: generations of plowing.
Though few landscapes appear more beautiful, fertile and orderly than
the straight, black, fragrant furrows of a newly tilled field, plowing is
unnatural and, in many climates and soils, one of the most destructive
things a farmer can do. Plowing strips soil bare, exposing it to erosion
by rain and wind. It collapses soil structure - closing off the water
channels left by deep roots and worms - and harms life in the soil,
which though it may appear dead is in fact Earth's most biodiverse
ecosystem, containing a third of all organisms. Those thousands of
microbial species are critical to human survival. They sustain
photosynthesis, which all food and oxygen come from, by ferrying
nutrients to plants and protecting them from pathogens. They
decompose wastes, turning corpses of plants and animals back into
new life. They're also directly vital to human health, the source of 90
percent of antibiotics and 60 percent of anticancer drugs.
Use the excerpt to answer the question.
Why does the author use a cause/effect text structure?
(1 point)
O to propose solutions to soil erosion
O to offer alternatives to antibiotic use
to explain the importance of plowing
O to demonstrate the complexity of farming
1 answer