Is this gramatically correct?

Question

I am struggling to understand this sentence "[Company name] technologies will keep you on top of the food chain, integrating intelligent monitoring into your systems to protect and grow your asset value." and am wondering if it is gramatically correct.

What I think this sentence is saying is: The company's products will keep their target market in control of the series of processes by which food is grown or produced, sold, and eventually consumed. The products do that by integrating intelligient monitoring into the target market's systems to protect and grow their asset value.

That still doesn't make any sense to me.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

anonymouson top of the food chain

The food chain is a term from ecology. Little fish eat plankton. Bigger fish eat the little fish. Apex predators eat the bigger fish. Apex predators are at the top of the food chain. They are not on top of the food chain. The writer made that mistake. His use of "food chain" is puzzling, but you often see such expressions used loosely by people who don't care what they mean but like the zing they imagine it gives their writing. Does it imply that "Company name" will devour their competition? Nothing to do with food, necessarily.

Anonymous · Answer

anonymous
I am struggling to understand this sentence "[Company name] technologies will keep you on top of the food chain, (BY) integrating intelligent monitoring into your systems to protect and grow your tHIS ." and am wondering if it is gramatically correct.

What I think this sentence is saying is: The company's products will keep their target market in control of the series of processes by which food is grown or produced, sold, and eventually consumed. The products do that by integrating intelligient monitoring into the target market's systems to protect and grow their asset value.

That still doesn't make any sense to me.

Your interpretation based on the wording, I would say is correct. But I am having doubts about the way the sentence was constructed. It does not sound smooth nor natural.

Anonymous · Answer

Thanks for your replies.

According to Lexico by Oxford, the "food chain" can mean: The series of processes by which food is grown or produced, sold, and eventually consumed.

That is what I believe the writer meant. i.e. their technologies help their clients stay in control of those processes. If we look at the original sentence, it seems to imply that by protecting and growing asset value (by using the technologies), prospective clients can gain better control of the "food chain processes". That's my interpretation, anyway.

Anonymous · Answer

As another poster had mentioned, " food chain" was loosely used in the context by the author, combined with the perplexing structure which makes it sound stiff.

Anonymous · Answer

Thanks for the responses. Is a teacher able to shed some light, please?

Anonymous · Answer

Also, those companies forming the "food chain" as per the Lexico definition, are the company's target audience.

CalifJim · Answer

anonymousWhat I think this sentence is saying is: The company's products will keep their target market in control of the series of processes by which food is grown or produced, sold, and eventually consumed. The products do that by integrating intelligent monitoring into the target market's systems to protect and grow their asset value.

No. I don't think so. Nothing in that sentence talks about processes by which food is grown or produced, sold, and eventually consumed. You must have read that in other places within their literature because it's not in that sentence. [Addendum: OK. I see you (or somebody) found that wording in a dictionary. You never know which anonymous is who around here. Why don't you all register and avoid the confusion?]

Further, their "products", which are really technologies, are not designed to keep their target market in control, as you claim in your paraphrase. You, who buy their technologies — which are basically software modules, I suspect — are theirtarget market! (I'm sure they'd like to keep you in control, too, but that's not what the sentence is saying. )

Rather, they're saying that if you buy their software, you will be able to stay in control of your food-processing systems (i.e., "keep you on top of the food chain"). [ The food-chain reference has nothing whatsoever to do with predation in nature, or if it does, it's too oblique to be as clever as the writer thought it was. ] That's because their software monitors various steps in the chain of operations that constitute food production and/or processing and/or distribution. (At least that's what I gather from their glossy but vapid advertising copy — which is grammatically correct, by the way.)

anonymousThe products do that by integrating intelligent monitoring into the target market's systems to protect and grow their asset value.

This last part is practically copied from the original sentence, so yes, of course it means what it means. It's just that again you've got the wrong end of the stick if you think they (the company selling this software) are protecting and growing their asset value. Rather, they are promising you, their customer, that you can protect and grow your asset value.

If you're interested in becoming a customer of this company, I hope you have extremely large quantities of .

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

It's still not making sense to me. This appears to be an essential clause: "[Company name] technologies will keep you on top of the food chain". This appears to be nonessential clause: "integrating intelligent monitoring into your systems to protect and grow your asset value."

From the nonessential clause, I understand that the purpose of integrating intelligent monitoring into my systems

From the nonessential clause, I understand that the purpose of integrating intelligent monitoring into my systems is to protect and grow my asset value. A nonessential clause provides supplementary information on an essential clause. I keep looking at the original sentence, and I still can't see the connection between asset value and staying in control of the food chain.

I'm trying really hard to understand this.

Yikey55 · Answer

Hi! It's the original poster here!

If I know what kind of clauses I'm dealing with, I may be able to understand things better.

I actually wonder if an extra comma would help.

"[Company name] technologies will keep you on top of the food chain, integrating intelligent monitoring into your systems, to protect and grow your asset value."

Anonymous · Answer

There are two clauses here . Consider this. "[Company name] technologies will keep you on top of the food chain (the technologies will help you stay in control of your food-processing processes), integrating intelligent monitoring into your systems to protect and grow your asset value. (while enabling you to stay in control, the monitoring tools protect and grow your asset value)."

Is this gramatically correct?

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