Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is interesting and well-written. The first part of the paper is clear and provides good context about the study sites. Unfortunately the quality of the paper is declining along the paper. Little by little, authors are more and more promoting their view about how pigeon peas are the solution for soil fertility issues in the areas they studied. The case for soil fertility problem is not really demonstrated, which is confirmed by the issue of fertilization, “access to fertilizer”, to appear after many other issues (Table 3). The use of mixed cropping system Yam-piegon pea is presented as having no drawbacks which is very surprising or at least it’s never discussed as a possibility. The mention of participatory co-design process is quite surprising as well as it is first introduced as a co-design process but scientists here look like pretty convinced already that pigeon peas use is the solution. In general I would advise for much more caution about the overall enthusiasm in this article. The conclusion paragraph is not good as it draws conclusions which are not in the paper about farmer willingness “to integrate pigeon pea into yam cropping system” which confirms that authors are maybe jumping on conclusions due to their desire to push for pigeon peas and it opens the risk that the participatory process they want to make will be from a top-down manner.

Line 80 : would be interesting to have at some points about the potential drawbacks [Competition for water ? Competition for labour time periods? Less yield from both? Market for pigeon peas?]

Line 119-136: I am not getting why this paragraph is needed for the understanding of your survey. Better relate with results or just take it out.

Line 171: weird sentence “the [2], report…”

Line 172: Your results or [2] results?

Line 172-174: The average reader will need an explanation for why having more women farmers means smaller farms. I guess it’s because land is inherited among more parties?

Line 194-196: In what ways the use of yield as a proxy for land fertility would not be satisfactory could be an interesting point to add here. Especially as in line 202-203 it is shown that this knowledge is enough for them to take action in favor of soil fertility.

Line 207: Which graph? You mean Figure 4 I guess.

Line 235-239: I found it strange that the use of animal instead of tractor was not considered before. Especially for such small landholding, tractor seems like an excessively capital-intensive solution. It is also mentioned that this area has large families (line 149-150), which means available family workforce probably makes tractor solutions irrelevant in many situations (depends on the opportunity cost of labout). As a consequence it’s not surprising to me that for tractors “the numbers are dwindling due to poor maintenance” because it seems like an inadequate technical solution for most farmers. Is the constraint “access to capital” could refer to the need for animals? [originally capital means “head of animal”]

Line 256: what kind of recent innovation and methods?

Line 261: I found the use of the word “indigenous” to be surprising here. Why not just “cropping systems?

Line 280-282: even though the ratio is quite weak between extension agents and farmers it does not look like a very significant problem for farmers as 90 of them indicate it as “not severe” and only 6 of them indicating it as “severe”. The need for know-how is higher. Doesn’t it suggest that extension agents are not really satisfying farmers’ needs for technical advice?

Line 286: as it is binary question, no need to give the both sides of the coin. “Majority (54%) of farmers across the districts had no knowledge of pigeonpea” is enough.

312-314: The article looks like authors are convinced that pigeonpea is the way forward. Is there no problem or drawbacks from the use of this crop? How do you explain, as the crop is “not completely new” that it has not spread around if it’s so great?

Line 324: “Therefore, the youths must be targeted during awareness creation and demonstrations”. This recommendation is not fitting what I am reading. I think it is based on author’s assumption that younger farmers would be less afraid to try new introduction. Maybe it’s not a question of being “afraid” or not but because younger farmers have less land and need more intense cropping to sustain the fertility than older farmers with higher quantity of land and more space for rotation and fallowing.

Line 328-329: Maybe you’re getting the wrong characteristics here as being “young” or “less educated” is just a proxy of land capital ownership. It appears to me quite logical that farmers with less land (usually the poorest, confirmed by lower level of education and age) are the ones who will be more interested into technics of fertility intensification. But ultimately, age and education might not be the best criteria for awareness (especially that it is said that they are the ones who often already know it…).

Line 344-345: I think I am not convinced about this. No farmer will complain about better yield of course but it’s always a compromise for the use of resources and return on investment. Is better yield means higher income for the families? The article does not give any insight into that.

Line 349-350: such statement is quite contradictory with previous statement about integration of farmers and participatory processes and co-design. My overall impression is that the whole paper is totally convinced that pigeon pea is the solution and want to push this idea forward. The paper must be much more cautious about it. I am seeing no real discussion on the pros and cons of this practice.

 Line 353-354: “farmers need to be encouraged to integrate it into their cropping systems through farmer participatory evaluation approach”. Almost same comment here, you’re taking a position on participatory processes which is not really consistent with the co-design stance taken above (line 261-265). Such top-down approach of participation has been criticized for decades (Arnstein 1968).

358-359: Very strange sentence on government intervention, why does it appear in the conclusion? Is there anything in the paper supporting such conclusion?

360-362: Your survey results presented in this paper does not support such a conclusion.

Author Response

Line 80 : would be interesting to have at some points about the potential drawbacks [Competition for water ? Competition for labour time periods? Less yield from both? Market for pigeon peas?]

Response 1: The alert to include some drawbacks of the pigeonpea in a yam cropping is well noted and included

Line 119-136: I am not getting why this paragraph is needed for the understanding of your survey. Better relate with results or just take it out.

Response 2: line 119-136 forms part of the data collected, and the empirical model used in the study.

Line 171: weird sentence “the [2], report…”

Response 3: this weird sentence is at 178 not 171. The sentence has been fixed

Line 172: Your results or [2] results?

Response 4: the results is in reference to the results of the study and now clearly indicated

Line 172-174: The average reader will need an explanation for why having more women farmers means smaller farms. I guess it’s because land is inherited among more parties?

Response 5: the reason is men are head of households and therefore favored in getting more land area than women.

Line 194-196: In what ways the use of yield as a proxy for land fertility would not be satisfactory could be an interesting point to add here. Especially as in line 202-203 it is shown that this knowledge is enough for them to take action in favor of soil fertility.

Response 6: the importance of soil/land management in productivity is stress indicating just using yield (productivity) as the only indicator or land fertility might be misleading.

Line 207: Which graph? You mean Figure 4 I guess.

Response 7: the graph is on line 220. The sentence is reconstructed, and graph taken away.

Line 235-239: I found it strange that the use of animal instead of tractor was not considered before. Especially for such small landholding, tractor seems like an excessively capital-intensive solution. It is also mentioned that this area has large families (line 149-150), which means available family workforce probably makes tractor solutions irrelevant in many situations (depends on the opportunity cost of labout). As a consequence it’s not surprising to me that for tractors “the numbers are dwindling due to poor maintenance” because it seems like an inadequate technical solution for most farmers. Is the constraint “access to capital” could refer to the need for animals? [originally capital means “head of animal”]

Response 8: the reason for the use of tractors instead of animal power and family labour are

1)      the study area used were within the forest – savannah transition agroecological zones of Ghana closer to the forest zones where larger livestock such as cattle, horse and donkey production are very prone to influence of tsetse fly. As such larger livestock production to serve as power for farm activities are extremely low in the forest – savannah transition zones compared to Guinea savannah zones where  cattle and other larger livestock are produced and used in farming activities. 

2)      Larger family size but most of them are youths in school and mainly not interested in farming, especially yam farming which is very labour intensive. The few elderly farmers depend on hired labour and hired tractors to assist them in farming activities. 

 

Line 256: what kind of recent innovation and methods?

Response 9: recent innovation methods such as integrated soil fertility and weed management, reduced staking options for yam production, use of mechanized ridging instead of mounds in yam production etc. these have been added to the statement

Line 261: I found the use of the word “indigenous” to be surprising here. Why not just “cropping systems?

Response 10: the word “indigenous” is introduced to qualify the cropping system, thus to indicate the farmers/ local practice

Line 280-282: even though the ratio is quite weak between extension agents and farmers it does not look like a very significant problem for farmers as 90% of them indicated it as “not severe” and only 6%of them indicating it as “severe”. The need for know-how is higher. Doesn’t it suggest that extension agents are not really satisfying farmers’ needs for technical advice?

Response 11: this gives an indication of extension officers not satisfying farmers needs in technical advice as indicated. This is because one extension officer would have to cover more farmers beyond his/her ability. Also, the farmers had a list of constraints to rank and since most of them are not into recent innovative approaches but rather still use the indigenous/farmers practices see the extension officers technical advice as not being very important compared with other constraints. This might have resulted in majority (90) indicating “not severe”

Line 286: as it is binary question, no need to give the both sides of the coin. “Majority (54%) of farmers across the districts had no knowledge of pigeonpea” is enough.

Response 12: Yes we agree, the sentences that followed the average across the districts gave further information on the district levels.

312-314: The article looks like authors are convinced that pigeonpea is the way forward. Is there no problem or drawbacks from the use of this crop? How do you explain, as the crop is “not completely new” that it has not spread around if it’s so great?

Response 13: pigeonpea-yam cropping system like any other cropping system is likely to have drawbacks. We have therefore indicated some of the possible drawbacks and  shown how the attributes of pigeopea would help reduce these drawbacks

Line 324: “Therefore, the youths must be targeted during awareness creation and demonstrations”. This recommendation is not fitting what I am reading. I think it is based on author’s assumption that younger farmers would be less afraid to try new introduction. Maybe it’s not a question of being “afraid” or not but because younger farmers have less land and need more intense cropping to sustain the fertility than older farmers with higher quantity of land and more space for rotation and fallowing.

Response 14: the target of the youth is based on result that among the factors influencing the knowledge of pigeonpea, one is influence as a result of age. If the youth are willing to take more risk then it would be right to target them. Also, if the average age of the yam farmers interviewed were younger than the Ghana national farmer age of 55, then it would be appropriate to target the youth in the introduction of this innovation.

Line 328-329: Maybe you’re getting the wrong characteristics here as being “young” or “less educated” is just a proxy of land capital ownership. It appears to me quite logical that farmers with less land (usually the poorest, confirmed by lower level of education and age) are the ones who will be more interested into technics of fertility intensification. But ultimately, age and education might not be the best criteria for awareness (especially that it is said that they are the ones who often already know it…).

Response 14: we agree with the thoughts above and have subsequently changed the inferences accordingly

Line 344-345: I think I am not convinced about this. No farmer will complain about better yield of course but it’s always a compromise for the use of resources and return on investment. Is better yield means higher income for the families? The article does not give any insight into that.

Response 15: High yield might not necessary be high income but to the smallholder farmer who is mostly interested in getting food for the family high yield would mean a lot to food security

Line 349-350: such statement is quite contradictory with previous statement about integration of farmers and participatory processes and co-design. My overall impression is that the whole paper is totally convinced that pigeon pea is the solution and want to push this idea forward. The paper must be much more cautious about it. I am seeing no real discussion on the pros and cons of this practice.

Response 16: the participatory  approach is to get stallholder farmers and all stakeholders involved in the development of the technology. This  survey precedes a field study at both on-station and on-farm to be sure pigeopea-yam cropping system would work. We thank you for your caution and have this in mind as we proceed.

 Line 353-354: “farmers need to be encouraged to integrate it into their cropping systems through farmer participatory evaluation approach”. Almost same comment here, you’re taking a position on participatory processes which is not really consistent with the co-design stance taken above (line 261-265). Such top-down approach of participation has been criticized for decades (Arnstein 1968).

Response 17: participatory approach in technology development results in co-designing and creation of technology acceptable to all stakeholders. This is a bottom up approach than a bottom down approach. Recent publications such as “Agricultural Systems: Agroecology and Rural Innovation for Development” edited by Sieglinde Snapp and Barry Pound (2017) support and promote farmer participatory technology development and dissemination. Here we were only reiterating the importance of participatory approaches. 

 

358-359: Very strange sentence on government intervention, why does it appear in the conclusion? Is there anything in the paper supporting such conclusion?

Response 18: Government intervention is very important and curtail to the success of technology diffusion and adoption in a developing country such as Ghana. If there is no government policy backing the technology can be perfect but may not succeed. To be precise the sentence was brought in as policy implication

360-362: Your survey results presented in this paper does not support such a conclusion.

Response 19: we believe the conclusions gives the summary of the results and the way forward of the pigeonpea-yam cropping system.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very interesting piece of work to read. The motivation behind the study is with high value. It is highly needed at all levels: farmers, community, decision makers and also funding agencies. So, in general, I see this study of a great value to be published and I also recommend the authors to present the results in as many national/international conferences as possible, also send a copy to FAO. But I have the following comments to improve the quality of the paper: 1. I highly encourage the author to send the paper for English editing. 2. In Line 89: "... evaluate yams farmers..." what do you mean by than, in what aspect, demography, socio-economic, knowledge.. please make this objective clear here. 3. The authors asked the farmers about the reasons for the high/low yield. and most answers were about the soil fertility "soil health"? Have the author asked the farmers if they know what is soil health and how to improve it? Moreover, this study will be highly improved if associated with some national data about the soil fertility in the area with some spatial analysis showing the studied farms and the fertility of the land to see if the farmers were right or not. I mean farmers already related the soil fertility with the yield and we can't blame them on making such a correlation. But as a researcher, we should elaborate on such opinion. 3. Line 113-114: the sentence is not clear: " information of farmer's knowledge and use of pigeonpea...." do you mean their knowledge about the crop? 4. Line 120-121: farmers characteristics.. I think you should define/mention these characteristics at the beginning: demography, socio-economic, and educational. Just an opinion! 5. Line 145: how many of the interviewed women were owner farmers? Because I feel this could be higher than many parts of the world. Interesting! 6. This is a presntation opinion. Your tables started like this: ESM then AAP then TMBA, while your figures were in the following order: AAD-ESM-TMBA.. It would be better to follow the same order in tables and figures. 7. Add to the caption of Figure 3 ".... by district". 8. Line 219-220: "The responses were then ranked by assigning weights from one to three in declining order such that rank one has the highest weight of 3 and rank three has the lowest weight of one" Who assigned these weights? farmers, researchers, agricultural experts??? Usually focus groups assign such weight to represent different opinion, interest and backgrounds. 9. One interesting thing is that the farmers were all "relatively" old around 47 years old? Why?? Do the youth look for other jobs rather than farming? This needs to be explained better in the paper. 10. Another interesting point is "the Knowledge of Usages of pigeonpea" why do we see this high variation in the different usage??? one by one? Why only ESM know about its usage "For intercropping", and "As a commercial crop".. knowing about commerical means that the farmers at ESM are more aware of the market "i.e. more educated". But actually according to Table 1. TMBA has higher eduction level? or is it because ESM are closer to the city center??? or why? MY MAIN POINT HERE IS THAT THE AUTHORS HAVE MADE GREAT JOB IN THIS STUDY. BUT IT IS NOT ONLY ABOUT STATISTICAL ANALYSIS .. GIVING WHY.. WILL HELP A LOT rather than just mention the statistics. I can see other publications to be done to dig deeper on some of the observations here. I would encourage the authors to list these studies in the conclusion. This will improve a lot the quality of the paper. 11. I can see who the age and education can affect the knowledge of the farmers about the topic under study.. but I do not know who the family size actually affect their knowledge. I BELIEVE TWO MAJOR FACTORS HAVE BEEN IGNORED "FAMILY INCOME AND KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SOIL HEALTH"...other factors could be the distance from city centers.. major markets? Finally, I would like to thank the author for making such a study. I enjoyed reading the paper, and I highly encourage the author to: 1) improve the language "editing", 2) better elaborate in the results, 3) add a map of soil fertility in the studied area "if available", and 4) clearly state what is next to be done.

Author Response

Line 80 : would be interesting to have at some points about the potential drawbacks [Competition for water ? Competition for labour time periods? Less yield from both? Market for pigeon peas?]

Response 1: The alert to include some drawbacks of the pigeonpea in a yam cropping is well noted and included

Line 119-136: I am not getting why this paragraph is needed for the understanding of your survey. Better relate with results or just take it out.

Response 2: line 119-136 forms part of the data collected, and the empirical model used in the study.

Line 171: weird sentence “the [2], report…”

Response 3: this weird sentence is at 178 not 171. The sentence has been fixed

Line 172: Your results or [2] results?

Response 4: the results is in reference to the results of the study and now clearly indicated

Line 172-174: The average reader will need an explanation for why having more women farmers means smaller farms. I guess it’s because land is inherited among more parties?

Response 5: the reason is men are head of households and therefore favored in getting more land area than women.

Line 194-196: In what ways the use of yield as a proxy for land fertility would not be satisfactory could be an interesting point to add here. Especially as in line 202-203 it is shown that this knowledge is enough for them to take action in favor of soil fertility.

Response 6: the importance of soil/land management in productivity is stress indicating just using yield (productivity) as the only indicator or land fertility might be misleading.

Line 207: Which graph? You mean Figure 4 I guess.

Response 7: the graph is on line 220. The sentence is reconstructed, and graph taken away.

Line 235-239: I found it strange that the use of animal instead of tractor was not considered before. Especially for such small landholding, tractor seems like an excessively capital-intensive solution. It is also mentioned that this area has large families (line 149-150), which means available family workforce probably makes tractor solutions irrelevant in many situations (depends on the opportunity cost of labout). As a consequence it’s not surprising to me that for tractors “the numbers are dwindling due to poor maintenance” because it seems like an inadequate technical solution for most farmers. Is the constraint “access to capital” could refer to the need for animals? [originally capital means “head of animal”]

Response 8: the reason for the use of tractors instead of animal power and family labour are

1)      the study area used were within the forest – savannah transition agroecological zones of Ghana closer to the forest zones where larger livestock such as cattle, horse and donkey production are very prone to influence of tsetse fly. As such larger livestock production to serve as power for farm activities are extremely low in the forest – savannah transition zones compared to Guinea savannah zones where  cattle and other larger livestock are produced and used in farming activities. 

2)      Larger family size but most of them are youths in school and mainly not interested in farming, especially yam farming which is very labour intensive. The few elderly farmers depend on hired labour and hired tractors to assist them in farming activities. 

 

Line 256: what kind of recent innovation and methods?

Response 9: recent innovation methods such as integrated soil fertility and weed management, reduced staking options for yam production, use of mechanized ridging instead of mounds in yam production etc. these have been added to the statement

Line 261: I found the use of the word “indigenous” to be surprising here. Why not just “cropping systems?

Response 10: the word “indigenous” is introduced to qualify the cropping system, thus to indicate the farmers/ local practice

Line 280-282: even though the ratio is quite weak between extension agents and farmers it does not look like a very significant problem for farmers as 90% of them indicated it as “not severe” and only 6%of them indicating it as “severe”. The need for know-how is higher. Doesn’t it suggest that extension agents are not really satisfying farmers’ needs for technical advice?

Response 11: this gives an indication of extension officers not satisfying farmers needs in technical advice as indicated. This is because one extension officer would have to cover more farmers beyond his/her ability. Also, the farmers had a list of constraints to rank and since most of them are not into recent innovative approaches but rather still use the indigenous/farmers practices see the extension officers technical advice as not being very important compared with other constraints. This might have resulted in majority (90) indicating “not severe”

Line 286: as it is binary question, no need to give the both sides of the coin. “Majority (54%) of farmers across the districts had no knowledge of pigeonpea” is enough.

Response 12: Yes we agree, the sentences that followed the average across the districts gave further information on the district levels.

312-314: The article looks like authors are convinced that pigeonpea is the way forward. Is there no problem or drawbacks from the use of this crop? How do you explain, as the crop is “not completely new” that it has not spread around if it’s so great?

Response 13: pigeonpea-yam cropping system like any other cropping system is likely to have drawbacks. We have therefore indicated some of the possible drawbacks and  shown how the attributes of pigeopea would help reduce these drawbacks

Line 324: “Therefore, the youths must be targeted during awareness creation and demonstrations”. This recommendation is not fitting what I am reading. I think it is based on author’s assumption that younger farmers would be less afraid to try new introduction. Maybe it’s not a question of being “afraid” or not but because younger farmers have less land and need more intense cropping to sustain the fertility than older farmers with higher quantity of land and more space for rotation and fallowing.

Response 14: the target of the youth is based on result that among the factors influencing the knowledge of pigeonpea, one is influence as a result of age. If the youth are willing to take more risk then it would be right to target them. Also, if the average age of the yam farmers interviewed were younger than the Ghana national farmer age of 55, then it would be appropriate to target the youth in the introduction of this innovation.

Line 328-329: Maybe you’re getting the wrong characteristics here as being “young” or “less educated” is just a proxy of land capital ownership. It appears to me quite logical that farmers with less land (usually the poorest, confirmed by lower level of education and age) are the ones who will be more interested into technics of fertility intensification. But ultimately, age and education might not be the best criteria for awareness (especially that it is said that they are the ones who often already know it…).

Response 14: we agree with the thoughts above and have subsequently changed the inferences accordingly

Line 344-345: I think I am not convinced about this. No farmer will complain about better yield of course but it’s always a compromise for the use of resources and return on investment. Is better yield means higher income for the families? The article does not give any insight into that.

Response 15: High yield might not necessary be high income but to the smallholder farmer who is mostly interested in getting food for the family high yield would mean a lot to food security

Line 349-350: such statement is quite contradictory with previous statement about integration of farmers and participatory processes and co-design. My overall impression is that the whole paper is totally convinced that pigeon pea is the solution and want to push this idea forward. The paper must be much more cautious about it. I am seeing no real discussion on the pros and cons of this practice.

Response 16: the participatory  approach is to get stallholder farmers and all stakeholders involved in the development of the technology. This  survey precedes a field study at both on-station and on-farm to be sure pigeopea-yam cropping system would work. We thank you for your caution and have this in mind as we proceed.

 Line 353-354: “farmers need to be encouraged to integrate it into their cropping systems through farmer participatory evaluation approach”. Almost same comment here, you’re taking a position on participatory processes which is not really consistent with the co-design stance taken above (line 261-265). Such top-down approach of participation has been criticized for decades (Arnstein 1968).

Response 17: participatory approach in technology development results in co-designing and creation of technology acceptable to all stakeholders. This is a bottom up approach than a bottom down approach. Recent publications such as “Agricultural Systems: Agroecology and Rural Innovation for Development” edited by Sieglinde Snapp and Barry Pound (2017) support and promote farmer participatory technology development and dissemination. Here we were only reiterating the importance of participatory approaches. 

 

358-359: Very strange sentence on government intervention, why does it appear in the conclusion? Is there anything in the paper supporting such conclusion?

Response 18: Government intervention is very important and curtail to the success of technology diffusion and adoption in a developing country such as Ghana. If there is no government policy backing the technology can be perfect but may not succeed. To be precise the sentence was brought in as policy implication

360-362: Your survey results presented in this paper does not support such a conclusion.

Response 19: we believe the conclusions gives the summary of the results and the way forward of the pigeonpea-yam cropping system.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Qualities of the paper mention in the previous review remain mainly valid. Some points have been answered properly. However, the review proposed remains not very convincing on major points. The main issue related with the overall optimism on pigeon-pea-yam solution still remains. Results are not really discussed and put into critical perspective which is problematic for a scientific paper. Drawbacks do not really appear, or proposed sentences to illustrate this point are not clearly understandable. The newly proposed manuscript has probably be not revised properly as sentences added are sometimes not very well written, referencing has not been done according to instructions and some answers of comments do not answer to previous comments.

Last comments on conclusion looks like you are satisfied with your conclusions and do not want to integrate the fact that this is a research paper and not an opinion paper. This uncooperativeness makes it complicated to think this paper can move forward to publication. The overall confidence of authors and lack of caution and reflexivity makes the approval of this paper complicated.

It should be added too that the format of answer made the review particularly difficult as modifications to the original manuscript were often not indicated (with track changes for example, or quoted in author’s answer with line indication). It should be considered as a good practice for other publication and review process.

My comments are indicated in blue below your previous answers. When comments from the last version do not appear below, it means they have been answered properly.

Line 80 : would be interesting to have at some points about the potential drawbacks [Competition for water ? Competition for labour time periods? Less yield from both? Market for pigeon peas?]

Response 1: The alert to include some drawbacks of the pigeonpea in a yam cropping is well noted and included”

Sentences to indicate drawbacks are unconvincing. Especially the second sentence added is not understandable and syntax should be checked. Reference 27 and 28 added have not been introduced in the proper numbering asked by the journal. It should be 11 & 12.

“Line 119-136: I am not getting why this paragraph is needed for the understanding of your survey. Better relate with results or just take it out.

Response 2: line 119-136 forms part of the data collected, and the empirical model used in the study.”

This does not answer my comment which said that the link from model to results isn’t clear and should be more clearly stated. Maybe refer more clearly to the factor analysis appearing late in table 6.

Line 194-196: In what ways the use of yield as a proxy for land fertility would not be satisfactory could be an interesting point to add here. Especially as in line 202-203 it is shown that this knowledge is enough for them to take action in favor of soil fertility.

Response 6: the importance of soil/land management in productivity is stress indicating just using yield (productivity) as the only indicator or land fertility might be misleading.

This answer does not answer to the point originally made. It’s not critically important though.

Line 207: Which graph? You mean Figure 4 I guess.

Response 7: the graph is on line 220. The sentence is reconstructed, and graph taken away.

If the graph was “taken away” it looks like it is still in the manuscript…

Line 235-239: I found it strange that the use of animal instead of tractor was not considered before. Especially for such small landholding, tractor seems like an excessively capital-intensive solution. It is also mentioned that this area has large families (line 149-150), which means available family workforce probably makes tractor solutions irrelevant in many situations (depends on the opportunity cost of labout). As a consequence it’s not surprising to me that for tractors “the numbers are dwindling due to poor maintenance” because it seems like an inadequate technical solution for most farmers. Is the constraint “access to capital” could refer to the need for animals? [originally capital means “head of animal”]

Response 8: the reason for the use of tractors instead of animal power and family labour are

1)      the study area used were within the forest – savannah transition agroecological zones of Ghana closer to the forest zones where larger livestock such as cattle, horse and donkey production are very prone to influence of tsetse fly. As such larger livestock production to serve as power for farm activities are extremely low in the forest – savannah transition zones compared to Guinea savannah zones where  cattle and other larger livestock are produced and used in farming activities. 

2)      Larger family size but most of them are youths in school and mainly not interested in farming, especially yam farming which is very labour intensive. The few elderly farmers depend on hired labour and hired tractors to assist them in farming activities. 

Thanks for this detailed answer. (1) The fact that tse tse fly prevent to sustain animals does not make tractor a more viable solution neither. It looks like farmers are trapped by animal unavailability and poorly adapted tractor (shown by their low maintenance). It seems a key hindrance to agricultural development in this area (2) Being interesting in farming activities is very different from being integrated by parents into farming work.

Line 261: I found the use of the word “indigenous” to be surprising here. Why not just “cropping systems?

Response 10: the word “indigenous” is introduced to qualify the cropping system, thus to indicate the farmers/ local practice

Then just indicate “local cropping systems”. Indigenous is an ambiguous word with lot of literature about its use. Please use reference to define it if you want to keep its use.

Line 280-282: even though the ratio is quite weak between extension agents and farmers it does not look like a very significant problem for farmers as 90% of them indicated it as “not severe” and only 6%of them indicating it as “severe”. The need for know-how is higher. Doesn’t it suggest that extension agents are not really satisfying farmers’ needs for technical advice?

Response 11: this gives an indication of extension officers not satisfying farmers needs in technical advice as indicated. This is because one extension officer would have to cover more farmers beyond his/her ability. Also, the farmers had a list of constraints to rank and since most of them are not into recent innovative approaches but rather still use the indigenous/farmers practices see the extension officers technical advice as not being very important compared with other constraints. This might have resulted in majority (90) indicating “not severe”

It looks like density of advisors is not the issue as farmers currently do not think they lack extension. The only thing you could do here is to discuss whether interest in extension could increase in case technicians could transmit desired know how by farmers.

312-314: The article looks like authors are convinced that pigeonpea is the way forward. Is there no problem or drawbacks from the use of this crop? How do you explain, as the crop is “not completely new” that it has not spread around if it’s so great?

Response 13: pigeonpea-yam cropping system like any other cropping system is likely to have drawbacks. We have therefore indicated some of the possible drawbacks and  shown how the attributes of pigeopea would help reduce these drawbacks

As mentioned to response 1, drawbacks are not really considered and/or discussed. Due to poor indication of your manuscript changes I don’t really know what do you mean by “indicating of the possible drawbacks”.

Line 324: “Therefore, the youths must be targeted during awareness creation and demonstrations”. This recommendation is not fitting what I am reading. I think it is based on author’s assumption that younger farmers would be less afraid to try new introduction. Maybe it’s not a question of being “afraid” or not but because younger farmers have less land and need more intense cropping to sustain the fertility than older farmers with higher quantity of land and more space for rotation and fallowing.

Response 14: the target of the youth is based on result that among the factors influencing the knowledge of pigeonpea, one is influence as a result of age. If the youth are willing to take more risk then it would be right to target them. Also, if the average age of the yam farmers interviewed were younger than the Ghana national farmer age of 55, then it would be appropriate to target the youth in the introduction of this innovation.

Lots of assumptions here. It should be more clearly stated as speculations from authors. The age factor is a small factor with 10% significance threshold. Conclusions cannot be very strong.

Line 344-345: I think I am not convinced about this. No farmer will complain about better yield of course but it’s always a compromise for the use of resources and return on investment. Is better yield means higher income for the families? The article does not give any insight into that.

Response 15: High yield might not necessary be high income but to the smallholder farmer who is mostly interested in getting food for the family high yield would mean a lot to food security

It’s clearly not a straightforward causality. High yield may necessitate to invest more labour and/or time at critical period for other crops/activities. It can then provoke a significant opportunity cost which may even challenge food security.

 Line 353-354: “farmers need to be encouraged to integrate it into their cropping systems through farmer participatory evaluation approach”. Almost same comment here, you’re taking a position on participatory processes which is not really consistent with the co-design stance taken above (line 261-265). Such top-down approach of participation has been criticized for decades (Arnstein 1968).

Response 17: participatory approach in technology development results in co-designing and creation of technology acceptable to all stakeholders. This is a bottom up approach than a bottom down approach. Recent publications such as “Agricultural Systems: Agroecology and Rural Innovation for Development” edited by Sieglinde Snapp and Barry Pound (2017) support and promote farmer participatory technology development and dissemination. Here we were only reiterating the importance of participatory approaches. 

You should state more clearly your style of participation in your project. As far as “Snapp & Pound 2017” and what I know from this paper, you’re developing a “consultative participation” style. Maybe state more clearly in which style of participation you’re situated. As far as I am concerned I think the mention of participation is not significant nor necessary for your paper and generate more confusion than clarification

358-359: Very strange sentence on government intervention, why does it appear in the conclusion? Is there anything in the paper supporting such conclusion?

Response 18: Government intervention is very important and curtail to the success of technology diffusion and adoption in a developing country such as Ghana. If there is no government policy backing the technology can be perfect but may not succeed. To be precise the sentence was brought in as policy implication

Personal speculation about public policies does not relate to your results and seems quite irrelevant here. It should maybe be previously included in a speculative section to maybe have a sense in a conclusion section.

360-362: Your survey results presented in this paper does not support such a conclusion.

Response 19: we believe the conclusions gives the summary of the results and the way forward of the pigeonpea-yam cropping system.

My comment was more related with the fact that the sentence is not backed by your results and is not a “way forward”, it is a normative statement from authors about the necessity of pigeonpea. Such sentence could eventually be included by stating “ authors are of the opinion that…”.

 

 

 

Author Response

 

Open Review

(x) I would not like to sign my review report

( ) I would like to sign my review report

English language and style

( ) Extensive editing of English language and style required

(x) Moderate English changes required

( ) English language and style are fine/minor spell check required

( ) I don't feel qualified to judge about the English language and style

                Yes         Can be improved             Must be improved          Not applicable

Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?

                (x)          ( )            ( )            ( )

Is the research design appropriate?

                ( )            (x)          ( )            ( )

Are the methods adequately described?

                ( )            ( )            (x)          ( )

Are the results clearly presented?

                ( )            (x)          ( )            ( )

Are the conclusions supported by the results?

                ( )            ( )            (x)          ( )

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Qualities of the paper mention in the previous review remain mainly valid. Some points have been answered properly. However, the review proposed remains not very convincing on major points. The main issue related with the overall optimism on pigeon-pea-yam solution still remains. Results are not really discussed and put into critical perspective which is problematic for a scientific paper. Drawbacks do not really appear, or proposed sentences to illustrate this point are not clearly understandable. The newly proposed manuscript has probably be not revised properly as sentences added are sometimes not very well written, referencing has not been done according to instructions and some answers of comments do not answer to previous comments.

 

Last comments on conclusion looks like you are satisfied with your conclusions and do not want to integrate the fact that this is a research paper and not an opinion paper. This uncooperativeness makes it complicated to think this paper can move forward to publication. The overall confidence of authors and lack of caution and reflexivity makes the approval of this paper complicated.

 

It should be added too that the format of answer made the review particularly difficult as modifications to the original manuscript were often not indicated (with track changes for example, or quoted in author’s answer with line indication). It should be considered as a good practice for other publication and review process.

 

My comments are indicated in blue below your previous answers. When comments from the last version do not appear below, it means they have been answered properly.

 

Line 80 : would be interesting to have at some points about the potential drawbacks [Competition for water ? Competition for labour time periods? Less yield from both? Market for pigeon peas?]

 

Response 1: The alert to include some drawbacks of the pigeonpea in a yam cropping is well noted and included”

 

Sentences to indicate drawbacks are unconvincing. Especially the second sentence added is not understandable and syntax should be checked. Reference 27 and 28 added have not been introduced in the proper numbering asked by the journal. It should be 11 & 12.

Response 1.2  .The sentences have been rewritten to give proper meaning. And the references have been corrected to suit the journals style

 

“Line 119-136: I am not getting why this paragraph is needed for the understanding of your survey. Better relate with results or just take it out.

 

Response 2: line 119-136 forms part of the data collected, and the empirical model used in the study.”

 

This does not answer my comment which said that the link from model to results isn’t clear and should be more clearly stated. Maybe refer more clearly to the factor analysis appearing late in table 6.

Response 2.2: the reviewers concern was genuine. We have deleted as suggested and have made some few sentence modifications

Line 194-196: In what ways the use of yield as a proxy for land fertility would not be satisfactory could be an interesting point to add here. Especially as in line 202-203 it is shown that this knowledge is enough for them to take action in favor of soil fertility.

 

Response 6: the importance of soil/land management in productivity is stress indicating just using yield (productivity) as the only indicator or land fertility might be misleading.

 

This answer does not answer to the point originally made. It’s not critically important though.

Response 6.2: We agree that it is not critically important

Line 207: Which graph? You mean Figure 4 I guess.

 

Response 7: the graph is on line 220. The sentence is reconstructed, and graph taken away.

 

If the graph was “taken away” it looks like it is still in the manuscript…

Response7.2: Instead of the word ‘’figure’’ the word ‘’ graph ‘’ was used and thus we changed from graph to figure. We did not take away figure 4.

Line 235-239: I found it strange that the use of animal instead of tractor was not considered before. Especially for such small landholding, tractor seems like an excessively capital-intensive solution. It is also mentioned that this area has large families (line 149-150), which means available family workforce probably makes tractor solutions irrelevant in many situations (depends on the opportunity cost of labout). As a consequence it’s not surprising to me that for tractors “the numbers are dwindling due to poor maintenance” because it seems like an inadequate technical solution for most farmers. Is the constraint “access to capital” could refer to the need for animals? [originally capital means “head of animal”]

 

Response 8: the reason for the use of tractors instead of animal power and family labour are

 

1)      the study area used were within the forest – savannah transition agroecological zones of Ghana closer to the forest zones where larger livestock such as cattle, horse and donkey production are very prone to influence of tsetse fly. As such larger livestock production to serve as power for farm activities are extremely low in the forest – savannah transition zones compared to Guinea savannah zones where  cattle and other larger livestock are produced and used in farming activities.

 

2)      Larger family size but most of them are youths in school and mainly not interested in farming, especially yam farming which is very labour intensive. The few elderly farmers depend on hired labour and hired tractors to assist them in farming activities.

 

Thanks for this detailed answer. (1) The fact that tse tse fly prevent to sustain animals does not make tractor a more viable solution neither. It looks like farmers are trapped by animal unavailability and poorly adapted tractor (shown by their low maintenance). It seems a key hindrance to agricultural development in this area (2) Being interesting in farming activities is very different from being integrated by parents into farming work.

Response 8.2: Animal power is not available as suggested because in the study area raising of livestock for farming activity is not considered.

Line 261: I found the use of the word “indigenous” to be surprising here. Why not just “cropping systems?

 

Response 10: the word “indigenous” is introduced to qualify the cropping system, thus to indicate the farmers/ local practice

 

Then just indicate “local cropping systems”. Indigenous is an ambiguous word with lot of literature about its use. Please use reference to define it if you want to keep its use.

Response 10.2: the word “indigenous” has been deleted as suggested

Line 280-282: even though the ratio is quite weak between extension agents and farmers it does not look like a very significant problem for farmers as 90% of them indicated it as “not severe” and only 6%of them indicating it as “severe”. The need for know-how is higher. Doesn’t it suggest that extension agents are not really satisfying farmers’ needs for technical advice?

 

Response 11: this gives an indication of extension officers not satisfying farmers needs in technical advice as indicated. This is because one extension officer would have to cover more farmers beyond his/her ability. Also, the farmers had a list of constraints to rank and since most of them are not into recent innovative approaches but rather still use the indigenous/farmers practices see the extension officers technical advice as not being very important compared with other constraints. This might have resulted in majority (90) indicating “not severe”

 

It looks like density of advisors is not the issue as farmers currently do not think they lack extension. The only thing you could do here is to discuss whether interest in extension could increase in case technicians could transmit desired know how by farmers.

Response 11.2:  discussions have been carried out in line with reviewer’s suggestions

312-314: The article looks like authors are convinced that pigeonpea is the way forward. Is there no problem or drawbacks from the use of this crop? How do you explain, as the crop is “not completely new” that it has not spread around if it’s so great?

 

Response 13: pigeonpea-yam cropping system like any other cropping system is likely to have drawbacks. We have therefore indicated some of the possible drawbacks and  shown how the attributes of pigeopea would help reduce these drawbacks

 

As mentioned to response 1, drawbacks are not really considered and/or discussed. Due to poor indication of your manuscript changes I don’t really know what do you mean by “indicating of the possible drawbacks”.

Response  13.2: some possible drawbacks of using the pigeonpea in yam cropping systems are indicated in the introduction (shown in track changes lines 80 – 84)

Line 324: “Therefore, the youths must be targeted during awareness creation and demonstrations”. This recommendation is not fitting what I am reading. I think it is based on author’s assumption that younger farmers would be less afraid to try new introduction. Maybe it’s not a question of being “afraid” or not but because younger farmers have less land and need more intense cropping to sustain the fertility than older farmers with higher quantity of land and more space for rotation and fallowing.

 

Response 14: the target of the youth is based on result that among the factors influencing the knowledge of pigeonpea, one is influence as a result of age. If the youth are willing to take more risk then it would be right to target them. Also, if the average age of the yam farmers interviewed were younger than the Ghana national farmer age of 55, then it would be appropriate to target the youth in the introduction of this innovation.

 

Lots of assumptions here. It should be more clearly stated as speculations from authors. The age factor is a small factor with 10% significance threshold. Conclusions cannot be very strong.

Response 14.2: yes we agree and have made changes in the manuscript

Line 344-345: I think I am not convinced about this. No farmer will complain about better yield of course but it’s always a compromise for the use of resources and return on investment. Is better yield means higher income for the families? The article does not give any insight into that.

 

Response 15: High yield might not necessary be high income but to the smallholder farmer who is mostly interested in getting food for the family high yield would mean a lot to food security

 

It’s clearly not a straightforward causality. High yield may necessitate to invest more labour and/or time at critical period for other crops/activities. It can then provoke a significant opportunity cost which may even challenge food security.

Response 15.2: we agree with the important observations made and have worked on it.

Line 353-354: “farmers need to be encouraged to integrate it into their cropping systems through farmer participatory evaluation approach”. Almost same comment here, you’re taking a position on participatory processes which is not really consistent with the co-design stance taken above (line 261-265). Such top-down approach of participation has been criticized for decades (Arnstein 1968).

 

Response 17: participatory approach in technology development results in co-designing and creation of technology acceptable to all stakeholders. This is a bottom up approach than a bottom down approach. Recent publications such as “Agricultural Systems: Agroecology and Rural Innovation for Development” edited by Sieglinde Snapp and Barry Pound (2017) support and promote farmer participatory technology development and dissemination. Here we were only reiterating the importance of participatory approaches.

 

You should state more clearly your style of participation in your project. As far as “Snapp & Pound 2017” and what I know from this paper, you’re developing a “consultative participation” style. Maybe state more clearly in which style of participation you’re situated. As far as I am concerned I think the mention of participation is not significant nor necessary for your paper and generate more confusion than clarification

Response 17: we agree with you to be specific with our participatory approach. Therefore we used “consultative participatory approach” used by “Snapp and Pound 2017”

358-359: Very strange sentence on government intervention, why does it appear in the conclusion? Is there anything in the paper supporting such conclusion?

 

Response 18: Government intervention is very important and curtail to the success of technology diffusion and adoption in a developing country such as Ghana. If there is no government policy backing the technology can be perfect but may not succeed. To be precise the sentence was brought in as policy implication

 

Personal speculation about public policies does not relate to your results and seems quite irrelevant here. It should maybe be previously included in a speculative section to maybe have a sense in a conclusion section.

Response 18.2: the issue of government intervention is an opinion from authors. Therefore, we have modified the sentence to reflect that.

360-362: Your survey results presented in this paper does not support such a conclusion.

 

Response 19: we believe the conclusions gives the summary of the results and the way forward of the pigeonpea-yam cropping system.

 

My comment was more related with the fact that the sentence is not backed by your results and is not a “way forward”, it is a normative statement from authors about the necessity of pigeonpea. Such sentence could eventually be included by stating “ authors are of the opinion that…”.

Response 19: we have revised the statement

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, 

Thanks for this new version. I am glad to recieve much more constructive comments. Overall, changes made indicate more caution which was really needed for this paper. I appreciate that some conclusions are now clearly indicated as the position of authors rather than facts, that the positionning on participation is more consistent with the process undertaken. Please consider such similar state of mind with further review process.

I don't have time to indicate them specificaly but please correct some minor mistakes in the manuscript before publication (unecesary comas, extra spaces, etc).