Rhetorical Analysis
Tae-Seong Johnson
Professor Rafferty
Eng211C
12/21/2015
Excerpt of “Food Waste” Last Week Tonight
Food is one of the most important factor in one’s life. In some places on Earth, are surplus of food and in some places there are shortage of food. We have had this misconception of how farmers and restaurants owners are selfish, and that they never want to donate their food, however; that has not been the case; not all restaurant owners and farm owners are willing to donate, but there are enough that are out there who are willing to give out as much as possible. Organization like Foodbanks is stressing about how food should not be wasted, and John Oliver, the host of Last Week Tonight, through a television show lays out the stand points of both from the farmer’s perspective and from the low-income household’. Ethical appeals were shown by the farmer as an expert in a field of tracking the production; emotional appeals were expressed by both, the farmer and the low-income household; and logical appeals was mostly stated by John Oliver in which is based on his research.
John Oliver and his crew who have done the research on food waste, have done an amazing job using ethical appeals by showing the perspective of the farmer. The owner of the HMC farms Harold McClarty, who owns a peach farm, have said “Getting it into the hands of somebody to eat isn’t free” and “it’s a lot easier and cheaper basically to throw it away”(Last Week Tonight Farmer’s argument). Logically, to look at this point from a farmer’s eyes, it makes perfect sense. Obviously just to package the food can cost enormous amount, however; shipping is one of the most cost factor that can stop farmers from donating, unless if someone is willing to pick them up. A farmer in this sense is a perfect source to use because they are the ones who produces fresh (whole) food for the market, and they have the most knowledge about what is happening behind the scene. Farmers are expert in the sense of whole food and how well they are taken care of, and John Oliver and his research crew have a strong source to back their facts up.
Emotional appeals are shown by the farmer not only from when he said those two quotes from the paragraph above, but also when John expressed that the Mr. McClarty, the farmer, wanted to give out as much as possible before he has to throw away any fruits. According to John and his crew’s research, there are qualifications for fruit to be presented in the market, where Large companies such as: Walmart, Costco, or Target, to present these peaches. In this particular part of the video, there were many “perfect looking” peaches lying on the ground that cannot ever make it to the market, because to make sweet peaches, there have to be certain set amount of peaches that grows on a tree.
Through this research, John has made a point that, “in 2013 nearly fifty-million people have lived in food insecure household.” (Last Week Tonight, John Oliver) Along with the farmer who has expressed his emotion, there were also a low-income household where emotions were strongly expressed. This person is a single parent with three children. “It’s hard, I’ll go without food before my kids will”, and “Budget is down to the penny and it’s not enough.” (Last Week Tonight Low-income house hold’s argument) The mother had three children by her side in the video. To cry in front of her kids and in front of the camera shows the sadness and the struggles that rest of the fifty-million Americans who are going through the same situation.
Logical appeals were pointed out by John saying: “We are wasting all the labor and natural resources that went into making [food]… it seem especially unwise that farmers are pumping water into food that ends up being used as garnished for landfills” (Last Week Tonight, John Oliver). From an economic standpoint it is true that the labors and natural resources are being wasted. The economic loss might not be noticeable as an individual farmers but as a whole (nationwide), there is a clear view of economic loss, and John Oliver has done a great job touching on this point.
Television show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, keeps people entertained because it is funny in a sense that he add jokes about every situations, and it deals with serious matters of our generation. Everything was great, but John forgot to state a solution to the food waste problem. One of the most important part of stating a problem is to also include possible solutions to the problem. The aspect that John touches on this show is only the negative side of America with this issue; it would have been better to know what organizations are taking initiative to fix this problem so that they can get help from other people or other organizations who wish to but cannot help directly as much. Foodbanks is not the only organization that are fixing this issue, and maybe John and his crew should have researched and support those countless organizations that are trying to contribute their part to this.
To conclude, everyone obviously thinks that food should not be wasted, yet, anyone who does not know anything about how food is being wasted and why farmers have little or no choice but to throw them away. There were two clear sides of the argument; one from the farmer’s perspective and the other from a low-income household’s perspective. Both of them had a strong emotional appeals towards food waste, the farmer did not wanted to throw away food, and low-come household needed more food for their children. Ethical appeals and logical appeals have backed up all the arguments. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, brought the argument to both side (farmer and the low-income household), even though the suggested solutions to food waste issue were not stated, the show have shown the stand point of both perspective with a compelling argument from both side.
Link to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver “Food Waste” –> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY
Work Cited
Oliver, John. “Food Waste.” Last Week Tonight. HBO, 17 July 2015. Television Show.