Ranked List of the Identified Threats to Local Diversified Agriculture

Background:

This ranking process was the step following the SWOT development. 

The SWOT work had identified over 300 concerns grouped under the headings of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.  The concerns under each heading were
arranged by theme and given a descriptive title.

These descriptive titles were arranged in a matrix; one matrix for each of the four headings in the SWOT.yes”">  Each participant was able to cast 10 votes with descending
numerical weight (i.e. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1) for the issues most
important to them.  Voting was
distributed across all four SWOT matrices, by having participants place their
weighted token in the matrix cell with the title of their top 10 concerns. 

The value of the tokens in each grid of the matrix were summed and the relative magnitude of the totals produced a ranked list for each
of the four SWOT headings.

The ranked list for the Threats heading:

94 – Government and Corporations Driving Local Decisions

68 – Zoning and Land Policies

52 – Water Quality and Availability

37 – Ecosystem Health Threats

33 – GMOs

25 – Lack of Management and Leadership

19 – Lack of Financial Resources

13 – Drugs and Population Ill-health

11 – Fuel Situation

6 – Lack of Community

1 – “Surfing Culture” (all play and no work)

0 – Resource Scarcity

0 – Lack of Cultural Knowledge (of farming practices)

0 – Lack of Land for Farming

0 – Natural Threats (Volcanic Fog)