Strategic analysis for a research paper

SWOT Analysis and Strategies

Gardopia Gardens/Marketing

Abdullah Bin Jadid

Joe Brown

Nawaf Bakri

University of the Incarnate Word

2/Nov/2017

Introduction

Gardopia Gardens was founded by Stephen Lucke in 2012 after graduating from the University of the Incarnate Word. His main idea was to educate people about their health and to find ways they could improve that. During his time at the university he recognized the huge problem of obesity and wanted to address this problem in his own way. Stephen started by creating a garden at the university, the main focus was on diet and nutrition and wanted to educate people on how easy it can be to grow and consume fresh fruits and vegetables.

As a company, they serve to build communities, preserve the environment, educate and promote nature and well-being and reduce obesity by planting edible gardens across the city. Stephen Lucke would like to conduct market research to find out how many schools, businesses and households have a garden planted, if they have someone to fund and take care of it too. Gardopia are also interested in finding out how similar organizations like theirs run their business and what makes them successful. Our capstone group will be assisting in conducting the research for the survey that will be sent out to schools, businesses and household. While also conducting research into similar companies.

The main objective is to conduct market research for Gardopia Gardens by distributing out the already created surveys to as many schools as we can in the San Antonio district, we will also create our own surveys that will be handed out to the businesses and households to determine information on if they have a garden or not. This research provided will be used for Gardopia for their future projects. Along with this, another objective will be to find similar garden businesses and find what is their most successful practice and try to put in a plan of action which may be able to help Gardopia Gardens.

Gardopia Gardens is a non-profit organization that focuses on the wellness and good of all people, as a company they focus on the development of wellness and providing a healthier lifestyle that people can follow. The purpose of this strategic analysis is to conduct research on their practices internally and externally.

SWOT analysis and Strategies

City Slicker Farms

Strength

City Slicker Farms offers unique and low-cost resources to the members of the West Oakland community towards meeting their need; delivering healthy food for both themselves as well as their families through creation of organic, high-yield and sustainable backyard gardens and urban farms. The agricultural program assays at attending to all the residents of West Oakland in addition to prioritizing people who have the lowest degree access to farming by offering urban farming education, garden products, community markets among others (Leal, 2011).

Despite offering unique and low-cost resources, City Slicker Farms has the vantage of the youthful population who offer a larger workforce population of both volunteers and workers as a majority of these youths are in a direful need for workforce development opportunities. Furthermore, City Slicker Farms provide opportunities that hence cater for affordable, healthy food besides plying for improving the environment.

Weakness

Prior to its strengths, City Slicker Farms are subjected to gentrification. This relates to the restoration of run-down urban areas by the middle class resulting in the displacement of low-income residents. The demographic changes within the neighborhood serve a deterring factor to the emergence and growth of farming activities, an initial intended purpose.

City Slicker Farms are also faced with lack of resources such as equipment and funding. This is a critical factor regarding selection as there exist a rigid competition for funding among other programs hence these resources are necessary for making the project possible.

Opportunities

City Slicker Farms offer locally grown foods that are cultivated within a particular locality of the community. Gardens and farms demonstrate the practicality of offering local food-production systems that serves the community, offers empowerment to both adults and children who endeavor into learning about the relationship between farming, urban environment, and ecology. This gives the people of West Oakland community a vital tool for self-sufficiency and personal independence.

In addition to providing locally grown food, City Slicker Farms offers workforce development, peculiarly the youth. Through the involvement in urban agriculture, the West Oakland community project has successfully enabled the proposition of building job skills that tend to engage youth development.

Threats

One of the major obstacles City Slicker Farms face is lack of infrastructure due to lack of finances. Farmers within the West Oakland community are deprived of credit services that limit financial aid. Lack of credit services therefore hinders most of these farmers and deters them towards building proper storage facilities as well as viable infrastructure that ought to enable them to have access to markets and essentially develop credible farming equipment.

Planting Justice

Strength

In accordant with the website information, Planting Justice offers a unique proposition for nursery and aquaponics farms, an extensive farmland, food justice education, grassroots canvass, holistic re-entry, farmer training program and yard transformation. Through its nursery collection, Planting Justice has 1,100 different varieties of organic tree-crops. On the other hand, the food justice education program prompts people who are directly affected by food injustice and poverty towards creating a sustainable and more local food system through skills development in nutritional education, permaculture design and multimedia arts that serves the purpose of connecting urban gardens with the local and international movements and struggles for social justice.

Weakness

Lack of volunteers bears a constraining factor to Planting Justice. Its five-acre plantation grove and farm located in El Sobrante constitutes a place to an extremely diverse accumulation of shrubs and fruiting trees that currently house seven hundred varieties over hundreds of different plant families. The large garden farm rigorously needs attention as volunteers offer a supporting hand in managing these fields.

Opportunities

Planting Justice is favored with community health experts and advocates who are adequately trained and devoted to administer farmer training programs to the community of the specified locality. Consequently, the farming program hires staff directly without deviation from the communities they serve, and hence develop mentorship opportunities and close relationships with students through the consistent and reproducible weekly programming. Moreover, the Planting Justice has partnered with allies and educators towards evolving the “Plant! Cook! Organize!” curriculum that is to be availed online in the near future.

Threats

Planting Justice is presented with lack of resources and competition for funding respectively hence deterring diversification. Regarding agriculture, diversification involves purchasing and obtaining more machinery, increasing the amount of both capital and labor demanded in managing a more composite operation. With the limited resources as such, lack of resources tends to limit food production and resultantly hinders various development programs involved within the system and therefore inhibiting gradual improvement and general progress.

The Edible Schoolyard

Strength

According to the Edible Schoolyard website, the program inclines at sharing and building an edible education curriculum for pre-kindergarten students through to high school. The establishment envisions kitchens and gardens as interactive classrooms intended for entire academic subjects, and a free and delicious lunch that caters for every student with an aim of transforming the values and health of each and every child in the United States.

In essence, the Edible Schoolyard offers a unique proposition that involves an extensive curriculum, garden and kitchen classroom, family nights out and professional development. For the most part, the Edible Schoolyard trains educators across the world in creating sustainable and powerful edible education programs among their communities and schools. The program seeks towards backing and supporting communities while they develop sustainable and strong programs.

Weakness

Curriculum differentiation stands a weakness to the Edible Schoolyard program. By the fact that the system intends to serve an interchangeable curriculum to students within the United States and all over the world, it is out of the question as different regions of the world share different curriculum programs. This can only be realistic for the existence of a differentiated curriculum.

Opportunities

Contrastingly, an opportunity that best serve the Edible Schoolyard program is the differentiated curriculum as prior stated. In essence, a differentiated curriculum constitutes a curriculum that is individualized in order to meet a diverse needs and concerns of all students supposedly within one class. The system lies under equality, which implies giving each and every student equal opportunities of learning and not necessarily teaching every student in the exact same way as taught.

Threats

The Edible Schoolyard faces multicultural difference. Initially, the intent of the curriculum serves to engage all individuals with different cultural stands. This subjects different individuals into losing a little of personal identity prior to acquiring another curriculum. This is supposedly because; a majority multicultural education programs only focus on different cultures in the absence of providing an education that is within the constraints of the student’s culture. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge oneself fairly as it is crucial to know about the concerns of others at a cultural level.

Victory Gardens

Strength

In accordant to the Victory Gardens website, the urban farming program extends a unique selection of gardening basics that entails preservation workshops and container gardening besides pocket markets. The intended purpose to this program is to offer a wider selection of agricultural segments in order to facilitate the beginner gardeners and the advanced gardener as well as allowing individuals to grow what they eat.

The fundamental proposition to this program is to help people grow their food through availing education, infrastructure development, and maintenance. Additionally, Victory Gardens successfully engage urban agriculture including front and backyards, rooftops, and apartment balconies aside from public and commercial space respectively.

Weakness

Victory Gardens lacks extensive agricultural expansion in terms of surface area due to the confined spaces they tend to spot and exploit. In such a situation, there exist only low farming areas and hence low investment.

Opportunities

Victory gardens offers an extensive custom package services according to an individual’s requirements and specifications. Their service entails consultation on the available specifications within a particular garden space as well as assessing the site characteristics. Upon this, one is given advice on what to grow best within the particular garden and finally the development of an electronic “Custom Garden Map and Planting guide” that is oriented to one’s specific vision.

Threats

Lack of expansion: - referable to the idea that Victory Gardens employs the available spaces in front/backyards, rooftops, and apartment balconies aside from public and commercial space, there is an insufficiency in expanding upon in size, volume, quantity, and scope of production and output.

Grow NYC

Strength

With respect to the Grow NYC website, the program has a green strategy of green market, recycle, garden and teach respectively. Grow NYC fosters the green market through a broad network of farmers markets, fresh food box pick-ups, youth markets, and Greenmarket Co. that ensures the entire New York region has access to the healthiest and freshest local food.

Weakness

Grow NYC faces environmental concerns and soil contamination. In New York City, the environmental issues are largely affected by the size of the city, its density, the abundant and exuberant public transportation infrastructure, and its location that opens through the Hudson River.

Opportunities

Opportunities within Grow NYC pertains a volunteering workforce that the population contributes. The availability of volunteers predominately improves quality of life within New York City through environmental platforms and programs that are aimed at transforming the community’s foundations hence empowering all New Yorkers in order to secure a healthy and clean environment for the future generations respectively.

Threats

Access to water is a threat to the existence and the sustenance of Grow NYC program. In New York City, the waste-water treatment plants, domestic sewage, rain events cause water runoff, and industrial wastewater that is directed and washed off to the waterways creating what is termed as the CSOs or the Combined Sewer Overflows.

Fleet Farming

Strength

Fleet Farming is an agricultural program that transforms the underutilized land within the regions of Orlando and its neighborhood into productive small-scale farms so as to impact the local food systems. The program has a unique proposition as everything grown is availed and sold at local restaurants and farmers markets within a three-mile radius and only by transforming neighborhood lawns into gardens of community-driven farm plots.

Weakness

Revenue taxation stands a limiting factor to farming persistence with respect to financial constraints within Fleet Farming. Besides taxation, underutilization of land structures finds it limiting for the Fleet Farming program to expand and produce farm products on a large scale.

Opportunities

Opportunities within Fleet Farming are subjected by the inclination of transforming front, back, and side lawns within communal, business and residential land.

Threats

Financial capacity and changes in prices stand a threat to Fleet Farming.

Gardopia Gardens

Strength

Gardopia Gardens offers garden-based learning programs (GBL) that mainly caters for evidence-based practices which assays at teaching the youth on how to grow food. Its unique proposition plies for the GBL curriculum that has a strong emphasis on reducing malnutrition and childhood obesity.

Weakness

Market restraints stand a major weakness associated with Gardopia Gardens.

Opportunities

Higher volunteer turnout and the maximum use of technology in enhancing better yield hence better production

Threats

Health disparities that are primarily affiliated obesity.

Comparing SWOT analysis and Strategies

Predominately, Gardopia Gardens offers precise interventions in terms of purpose as compared to the other programs specified. In essence, Gardopia Gardens strives at attaining the core values of health, education, and environment. Contrastingly, other programs mainly focus on realizing agricultural output in terms of production entirely (Wylde, 2012).

On the other hand, it can ascertain that Gardopia Gardens emphasizes on addressing the need of a particular purpose intended towards a particular line of orientation. The program therefore offers effective interventions that are necessary to cover the growing eruption of childhood malnutrition and adult obesity, a missing factor among other programs stipulated.

References

Leal, F. W. (2011). The economic, social and political elements of climate change. Berlin: Springer Verlag.

In Alkon, A. H., & In Agyeman, J. (2011). Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Boswell, V. R., United States., & United States. (1942). Victory gardens. Washington, D.C: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.

Martinez, X., & Spizman, J. (2017). We rise. Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale.

Wylde, B. (2012). Wylde on health. Toronto: Random House Canada.