Today food travels from thousands of miles from the farm to the consumer. Some people say that it would be better for the economy & environment if people ate food produced from local farmers. Would the advantages of this idea outweigh the disadvantages?
Sample Response
Nowadays, food travels long distances before reaching consumers, and it is therefore believed that consuming locally grown food would bring about a number of economic and environmental benefits. Despite thesesome advantages, I believe that the disadvantages of this idea would be more significant.
Consuming locally grown food is advantageous in several ways. First, when produce is purchased and consumed locally, the local economy greatly benefits. More income will be generated for those involved in the food’s production, including farmers and growers, which will, in turn, enhance their standards of living. Eating locally grown food can also play a role in helping to protect the environment. The transportation of food around the world greatly contributes to global warming due to the large amount of carbon emissions produced during the process. Eating locally grown produce will help to reduce the distance that food travels, helping to reduce the negative effects of carbon emissions which are released from vehicles during transport.
In spite of the aforementioned benefits, I personally feel that the drawbacks need to be considered more carefully. For example, if non-locally grown foods are purchased less often Deleteon the market, local people willlocal people will therefore have fewer opportunities to try specialities and nutritious foodsexperience specialties and healthy products from other regions. Furthermore, if local foods become the dominant productsthe more dominant products, price manipulation by local merchants can occur. Several food sellers will make use of this opportunity to increase prices to control the market in the long term. It will be difficult for people, especially lower income households, to afford essential foodbuy essential foods for themselves, which could harm their healthcausing adverse impacts on their health.
In conclusion, I hold the belief that local food consumption, despite having economic and environmental merits, does more harm than good to people’s food choicesculinary experiences and local markets.
Why this response received Band 7.5
The response presents a clear comparative position and develops both the economic and environmental benefits and the consumer and market drawbacks in a well-organised argument. Its main limitation is that the disadvantages, particularly local price manipulation, are somewhat speculative and therefore do not fully establish why they outweigh the benefits. The highest-priority improvement is to strengthen that causal comparison with more convincing explanation or evidence and slightly more precise phrasing.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response addresses both sides and maintains a clear position, but the case that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits is not fully convincing.
Justify the claimed market and health consequences more rigorously and compare their scale directly with the stated benefits.
Coherence and Cohesion
Information is organised into focused paragraphs with clear progression and well-managed cohesive links throughout.
Use fewer explicit linking phrases where the logical relationship is already clear from the paragraph structure.
Lexical Resource
A sufficiently wide range of topic-specific vocabulary conveys precise ideas, despite several awkward or slightly imprecise combinations.
Refine collocations concerning market availability, product dominance, and effects on health to sound more natural.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A broad range of complex structures is used accurately, and the few minor lapses do not reduce clarity.
Maintain this control while tightening conditional and relative clauses so that causal relationships remain exact.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Today food travels from thousands of miles from the farm to the consumer. Some people say that it would be better for the economy & environment if people ate food produced from local farmers. Would the advantages of this idea outweigh the disadvantages?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.