Biocultural Heritages in Mallorca: Explaining the Resilience of Peasant Landscapes within a Mediterranean Tourist Hotspot, 1870–2016
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a highly interesting and relevant paper which is well suited for publication. The scholarship of the paper is very convincing and the scope (tying past to present) is well carried out. However, there are quite a lot of language issues and Chapter 2 should be worked on a bit to be more condensed. In particular as the readership are not historians some of the detail provided could also be condensed to make the overall frame of the paper more clear. In addition, though bicultural heritage is introduced in the beginning and resilience in the very title of the paper there is very little use of the concepts in the actual paper. A few explanations here and there would suffice to make the link more clear. A definition and some refs to the concept of biocultural heritage should also be added. I have made quite a lot of language edits/suggestions in the text and also in comments. I should stress however that I think this is a very good paper, that deserves to be well understood and quoted, hence my extensive comments.
General comments
Introduction: The concept of biocultural heritage needs to be explained in terms of how it is used in the paper, reading the paper a number of things are mention: Poly-cultural cultivation; Agroforest farming; Small-scale intercropping ; irrigated crops using traditional windmills highly diversified but labour-intensive, multi-functionally managed fruit groves; active maintanence of old species. Is this what authors mean by biocultural heritage? If so it should be summarised from the start. I also recommend use of the word cultural landscape here and there (which is interlinked). Have made comments about this in the text. There should be a reference or few to the concept of Biocultural heritage the below ones are highly relevant to the topic
Swiderska, K.; Argumedo, A.; Song, Y.; Rastogi, A.; Gurung, N.; Wekesa, C. Biocultural innovation: the key to global food security? IIED Briefing, 2018. Available online: http://pubs.iied.org/17465IIED/
Davidson-Hunt, I.J.; Turner, K.L.; Te Pareake Mead, A.;Cabrera-Lopez, J.; Bolton, R.; Idrobo, C.J.; Miretski, I.; Morrison, A.; Robson, J.P. ‘Biocultural design: A new conceptual framework for sustainable development in rural indigenous and local communities’. S.A.P.I.EN.S 2012, 5, 33-45.
Barthel, S.; Crumley, C.L.; Svedin, U. Bio-cultural refugia - safeguarding diversity of practices for food security and biodiversity. Glob. Env. Change 2013, 23, 1142–1152.
Gavin, M.C.; McCarter, J.; Mead, A.; Berkes, F.; Stepp, J.R.; Peterson, D.; Tang, R. Defining biocultural approaches to conservation. Trends Ecol. Evol. 2015, 303, 140–145.
Chapter 2: There is quite a lot of repetition in this chapter which is also very long and detailed and therefore difficult to follow. A suggestion is to put in subheadings in this chapter and decide if to outline chapter 2 strictly chronologically or thematically, now it's a bit of both which makes the text difficult to follow. (for instance the role of Juan March that is discussed 3 times in different sections of the text). I have also pointed out some of the repetition in the comments. In some cases there are summaries in the text after which the text goes back to discuss what was before the summary. A revision of this whole chapter would improve the paper considerably and also increase readability. The authors should also consider cutting some of the details here (or put them in footnotes).
Chapter 2: the use of the word “intensive” is confusing. Intensive agriculture leads the reader to associate to conventional modern agriculture. But when writing about local “intensive” agriculture, something else is referred to here. Better use a synonym to intensive that better explains what is meant with this word.
See much more comments in the actual PDF file.
Thanks for a very interesting read!
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
REVIEWER 1
1. The concept of biocultural heritage has been developed further and the relationship between biocultural heritage and landscape underlined. We have gone deeper in this topic using some of the references suggested by reviewer 1. This has been summarized from the very beginning in the introduction of the paper.
2. Chapter 2 has been condensed. Non-relevant aspects or too detailed issues have been replaced and now section 2 is more fluent, particularly for non-historians. Repetitions have been deleted and the section is more compressed.
3. The term intensive in section 2 is used within a context of the extension of peasant farming. Small farms adopted intensive cropping systems, whereas large estates were based on extensive systems. Intensive farming in small plots of land was put at work almost to a limit. This consisted in the use of mixed associated crops (e.g. dry-fruit trees, cereals, legumes, fallow reduction, etc.), combining this polyculture with livestock (sheep herds, pigs and other animal husbandry with an almost total absence of industrial feed-lots), use of draught power, and particularly an important workload. On the contrary, extensive cropping in large farms were less labour intensive and land productivity was also much lower in terms of physical output per unit of land. We have tried to make it more explicit. However, intensive cropping or farming should not be mismatched with the term industrial farming. Intensive reflects an increase of yields, not necessarily of profits. Here we have followed the approach of van der Ploeg, J.D. 2013. Peasants and the Art of Farming. A Chayanovian Manifesto. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing (página 83), in the sense that the author says: “the history of peasant farming is the history of ongoing intensification”. In this regard, farmers have introduced changes that have resulted in increases of yields, even at the expense of a higher workload. And, as van der Ploeg states, we can argue that those changes in yields reflect social relations and their transformations. This is alsoshown by other researchers such as Lains, P. and Pinilla, V. (eds.). 2009. Agriculture and Economic Development in Europe since 1870. Oxon: Routledge, and Doreen Warriner. 2013 [1939]. Economics of Peasant Farming. Oxon: Routledge.
4. We have taken into account the reviewer’s language suggestions.
5. We have used more extensively the word biocultural landscape throughout the text.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The article entitled “Biocultural heritages in Mallorca: Explaining the odd resilience of peasant landscapes within a Mediterranean tourist hotspot, 1870-2016” explains the historical construction of Mallorca’s biocultural landscapes, since the mid-19th century until today. I consider that the article is interesting because of the long period of time it analyses. This long-term vision allows to comprehend one first transition from traditional organic agriculture to industrialised agriculture and, later on, another transition from this industrialised agriculture to a modern, certified organic agriculture. The article shows the divergent strategies used by big landowners and peasants to fight socioeconomical and legislative changes during this time. As the authors explain, partial resistance from the peasantry against the Green Revolution model has allowed the preservation of valuable biocultural landscapes on Mallorca.
The article is correct from the formal point of view.
However, I consider that a few aspects must be improved:
I suggest that they avoid using the adjective “odd” in the title. I consider it to be unappropriate, as the article is not comparing Mallorca’s case with other study cases, thus it cannot be stated whether it is infrequent or not.
I consider it interesting that the authors characterise in more depth the island’s organic farming. That would allow to better explain and understand why it is linked to familiar agriculture. I also think that they should contextualise Mallorca’s organic farming evolution inside other close contexts (e.g. Spain). Figure 6 can be enriched with this information.
In section “Concluding Remarks” the authors say that “they made a very selective adoption of the Green Revolution techniques and implements” (page 16, line 572).This idea is repeated inside the text, but I consider that it was not proved enough in the article. I invite the authors to strenghthen this argument with more data and/or comparisons with other nearby regions.
Page 4, line 172. Remove parenthesis.
Page 4, line 173. Substitute “Plama” with “Palma”
Page 6, line 215. Correct Figure 3.
Page 10, line 350. Explain what it means by “mixed organic-industrial systems”, with data.
Page 10, Table 1. Substitute “T” by “t”.
Page 11, line 387. Specify which “Spanish environmentalist groups” they are talking about.
References’ numeration might be incorrect in some cases. For example, Page 11, line 506, reference 106.
Author Response
RESPONSE TO REVIWER 2
1. We have deleted the word ODD from the title.
2. We have contextualized further Mallorca’s organic farming evolution in the Spanish and World context. For doing so we have changed figure 6 adding some new data. We have added a map to figure 6 where readers can see the Balearic Islands province in relation to the other Spanish provinces. This map also represents the proportion of certified organic agriculture area in relation to the total agricultural land. This is explained within the text.
3. We have deepened the relationship between peasant family farming and organic farming. We have added the following sentence: “In this regard, organic farms have been built upon the previous family farms where peasant knowledge was still alive. Then, the transition from peasant to organic farming has not been such a big issue since they kept many advanced organic farming techniques and the transition to organic farming has been a chance for family farms to survive.”
4. When reviewer 2 says “In section “Concluding Remarks” the authors say that “they made a very selective adoption of the Green Revolution techniques and implements” (page 16, line 572). This idea is repeated inside the text, but I consider that it was not proved enough in the article. I invite the authors to strenghthen this argument with more data and/or comparisons with other nearby regions”, we understand that she/he calls for a better explanation of the adoption of the Green Revolution innovations.
The sentence he/she mentions is only referred to the case of family farming since the mid-20th century, as it is explained in the following paragraph: “As part-time producers, farmers were also interested in sparing the cost of external inputs relying on their own family work, resources, and peasant know-how. Hence, since the mid-20th century they made a very selective adoption of the Green Revolution techniques and implements—a feature also observed in other small-scale Mediterranean farmers [115].”
Nonetheless, we have attempted to better explain in different sections the particularities related to the adoption of Green Revolution innovations. We introduce a further explanation of advanced organic farming in section 2: “The agricultural growth, both in physical and money terms, was due to the increase of cropland area and of crop intensification via advanced organic farming techniques. These techniques used very little fossil fuel, relied mostly on local organic resources, and raised yields through labour and soil intensification. Therefore, advanced organic farming implied a very predominance of organic resources with a very selective and minimal adoption of industrial inputs and innovations”. And we compared Majorcan peasant agriculture to the Barcelona’s one in the context of Catalonia’s agriculture. We also compared the use of fertilizers to the Spanish average and other Spanish provinces, and Germany.
In section 2 we also refer to the First Green Revolution that was halted in Spain by the Civil War and and the autarchic fascist economy of the first two decades of the Francoist dictatorship.
We have stressed the coexistence of two farming systems: peasant farming and large estate industrial farming. In section 2 we highlight the increasing relevance of peasant farming and its spread even to former large farms being allocated.
We have tried to better explain in a nuanced manner the extension of the Green Revolution in section 3. We refer to the global trend of the second food regime (McMichael, 2009) and contextualize the case of Mallorca within Spain. Since Mallorca specialized in tourism, agriculture started a long process of falling profitability. This made it less attractive the adoption of Green Revolution inputs, and what remained was mainly peasant farming organized in family farms where the adoption of some industrial inputs was very low.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This is a really beautiful piece of work, very well referenced and the evidence presented clearly, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Plus a rare balance of theory and analytic work.
Author Response
Many thanks for your kindly response
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
