Please critically analyze my Analysis of an argument

[nadiaqadeer]

The following is taken from an editorial in a local newspaper:
Over the past decade, the price per pound of citrus fruit has increased substantially. Eleven years ago, Megamart charged 15 cents a pound for lemon, but today it commonly charges over a dollar a pound. In only one of these last 11years was the weather unfavorable for growing citrus crops. Evidently, then, citrus growers have been responsible for the excessive increase in the price of citrus fruit, and strict pricing regulations are needed to prevent them from continuing to inflate prices.
The above statement provides information about the increase in the price of citrus over the last decade and concludes that citrus growers are responsible for this increase and strict pricing regulations are needed. The evidence provided for this conclusion is that the weather was not being unfavorable for most of the times and also the present and past citrus fruit increased price difference. In my opinion, this is not a very strong argument.The writer of the argument has not taken into account various factors affecting price of a commodity. Secondly, he has not considered factors affecting the growth of an agricultural product other than weather conditions.
The price of any product depends mainly on the supply and demand for the respective product, cost of production, and also on the level of competition present in the market, the value of the currency and the overall level of inflation prevailing in the economy. Therefore, in order the above argument more persuasive the writer should have mentioned other factors affecting the price of citrus rather than just taking the difference of the prices over the past few years. The price the citrus might have increased because the cost of production like wages of the farmers, price of fertilizers, the price of petrol for the machinery etc . has also increased. And as a result, the citrus growers have to increase the price of citrus.
Weather conditions are only one of the factors that could affect growth of citrus. Other factors include, crop diseases, water irrigation system, crop care etc. Farmer’s personal life also affects his decisions to grow how much quantity of the product. A farmer might also reduce the production of a crop if he has not enough capital to invest. On the other had government taxes and subsidies also affect crop production. Hence, there is a possibility of increase price due to increase in taxes and reduction in government subsidies.
In the end, I would like to say that the above argument could have been strong is the writer has considered the above points. The suggestion given to control price level of a product is valid. But, the conclusion that growers are only responsible for the price increase is weak. I agree that there should be strict regulations to control the artificial increase in the prices of products and services.

[Osirus@VeritasPrep]

Hi, first time visiting the writing forum. I think your essay needs work. You made several grammatical errors that have the potential to lower your score. Your arguments were good, but I would recommend practicing the way you begin paragraphs. For instance, the way you began your second paragraph was not the best way to begin a paragraph. Generally, you want the paragraph to begin with a topic sentence, but with that sentence it was entirely too long for you to possibly discuss every detail that you outlined in that sentence. I think that sentence and paragraph would have been stronger if you would have stated it something like this: "The supply and demand for any product is determined by several inter-connected factors." After this, you should have mentioned three of the factors that the could affect supply and demand that the author failed to mention/consider in his argument. Typically when writing you have a list of things like that it would be more effective if you would have one sentence with a factor that determines supply and demand and the next sentence explaining why it is significant and how the author failed to consider this in his argument. In general you want to avoid creating a list of items and not expounding on each element in the list individually.

Hope that helps. Since, I don't visit this forum frequently if you have any questions shoot me a PM.