Impact of Climate Change on Cotton Production in Bangladesh

Dear Reviewer,

All the authors acknowledge your kind effort in reviewing the paper. We would like to express our gratitude for your support. Our responses are in the underneath table.

Sincerely yours’

All Authors of Sustainability-1053089

Reviewer 1:

The authors report on " Impact of Climate Change on Cotton Production in Bangladesh ". The impact of climate on crop production in Bangladesh is inseparable as it is considered as a global climate change hotspot. Therefore, the authors tried to identify measures to build cotton production resilience to the projected impacts of climate change by addressing bottlenecks along the cotton value chain, which help the subsistence level farmers to scale up and improve the share of the value they obtained from cotton production. The authors also provided recommended measures which indeed help the government, community-based organizations, private sectors and other stakeholders.

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Reviewer’s comments

Authors’ response

1

While the current manuscript provides useful information and represents a valuable contribution about an important subject. The authors have provided background information and tried to encompass all relevant references in the introduction part. They used appropriate research design but description of methodology was not much clear. The result part was not well explained. The authors compared and contrasts their findings from related previous studies, using data from other crops too. However, the overall quality of this manuscript must be improved substantially. The written presentation and readability can be improved by simplifying the language, shortening complex sentence structures, correcting many apparent typographical errors and enlisting the aid of an English language editor or editing service. The authors should work hard on mostly in an introduction, and result section.

Following are some of the specific comments and suggestions provided, regarding how the manuscript might be improved.

Thanks very much for your comments.

Description of Methodology: we see the reviewer has elaborated what was unclear in the methodology. We reviewed the journal’s guideline for authors, reflected on comments from the other reviewers, and reorganised the section accordingly.

Results: we also reflected on the reviewer’s comment on results and amended it. Descriptions of all our revisions are in the following sections.

English Copy editing: As the reviewer suggested, we read through the whole document again and amended sentences where we felt changes were appropriate. Since this is fairly a general comment and does not provide any specific examples, it was hard from our side to be more specific. However, we would like to assure the reviewer that:

1.     Four authors in the team have significant experiences of leading international research, reviewing apex journals, and working in UK based universities and thinktanks;

2.     One of the authors is an IPCC lead coordinating author, has 34000 plus citations and rated as one of the top 20 globally influential scientists of climate change;

3.     One of the authors, who did the final review of this paper is a native English speaker who has led and edited DFID and WB research for more the two decades.

Having said that, the authors would appreciate specific comments on any further editorial errors in the paper.

2

Abstract

Abstract is okay, however, the authors must pay attention in not using the words, such as this (line 18), it as subject (line 21), this research (line 23), this paper (line 28), these (line 30), in this (line 34). Please correct those words in abstract and in the entire manuscript, which are indefinite pronoun.

Thanks very much for the comment. From the reviewer’s comment, it is not very clear why indefinite pronouns should not be used. Therefore, we looked into the journal’s author’s guideline (https://www.mdpi.com/authors/) where there is no guidance on this matter. However, we have noted pronouns such as, ‘it’, ‘this’, ‘these’ are used in the author's guideline itself. We have also viewed several other articles from the MDPI website, where we found numerous examples of using similar pronouns in the way they are used in our paper. We also consulted a professional English language editor who has extensive experience of academic work. Their view is that indefinite articles can be used as the subject in a sentence, providing the context from the surrounding text makes it clear what is referred to,

Therefore, we think we are operating within the rules of the journal and accepted editorial practice. However, we have revised the abstract to both improve clarity and ensure it falls within the word limit of MDPI’s author’s guideline.

3

Introduction

The authors have provided sufficient background information on climate change and cotton production; however, whole document lacks coherent. So, the authors must work very hard to make the sentences are paragraphs more coherent and perform all the improvement suggested above.

Figure 1 is more like the constraints/limitations of cotton production during each stage, rather than the value chain approach. So, correct it.

Thanks very much for the comment. We see that the reviewer sees a lack of coherence among paragraphs and sections. Since there is no specific example, we reviewed the whole document and adjusted the structure to improve the logical flow of the whole document.

This research analyses climate change impact on cotton production in Bangladesh through a value chain approach. This approach is a new method of analysing climate change impacts on agriculture. Through this approach, climate change impacts are evaluated at different stages of agricultural production and sale, as it helps to pinpoint the problem (impact) better and thereby supports efficient decision-making on making changes to farming, storage and marketing. Therefore, the figure 1 is a depiction of the potential impacts of climate change along the agricultural value chain, The object is to highlight the potential challenges climate change brings along the whole value chain, and emphasise that climate change impacts are not solely confined to on-farm impacts. We have renamed the title to Figure 1 to make this clear.

4

Materials and Methods

Divide materials and methods section up using a series of subheadings, which will serve to improve the clarity and organization of this section.

Probable subheadings are site description and weather conditions, treatment and experimental design, data collection and calculations, and data analysis. I would suggest the authors to arrange the methodology into different subheadings as much as possible and explain them clearly. This section must be re-written.

The MDPI guideline says that the authors have the flexibility to choose the headings as per their structure and may use up to three levels of headings/subheadings. This implies that it is not mandatory to divide the whole methodology into several subheadings. 

The methodology section of our article follows the logical flow depicted in Figure 2, where the discussion drifts from one section to the other to draw a bigger picture of cotton value chain. Therefore, it is not possible to adopt the subheadings as suggested by the reviewer. However, to improve the paper’s readability, we have added 3 subheadings and 2 sub-subheadings.

The reviewer also did not say why this methodology section must be rewritten. The other two reviewers suggested elaborations of some specific points in this section, but neither of them indicated the need to re-write the entire methodology section.

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Results

Detail explanation of each and every figure, tables mentioned in result section must be presented clearly. The authors stated monthly mean rainfall duration in figure 3, and figure 5. Please clarify if it was mean monthly rainfall amount rather than the rainfall duration. Pay attention in the entire result section. So, result section must be substantially improved

As the reviewer suggested, we have amended the text in Figures 3 and 5. We have also reviewed the references of all figures and tables and tried to integrate their discussions and relevance into the texts.

The final part of this comment suggests improving the result section substantially. Here also, the reviewer does not provide any specific pointers to the limitations of the result section. We tried to show two things in the result section - firstly, the weather variabilities and projected changes of rainfall and temperature in the study sites and secondly, how climatic changes interact with different phases of the value chain of the cotton crop. We maintained a standardised discussion of similar kind of research.

6

Similarly, work accordingly in discussion section and conclusion section.

This is also a very general comment and does not have any specific indication of the areas to improve or any example of where the issues are. However, for information of the reviewer, we provide a background of this research work:

This paper is based on the experience of the Action on Climate Today (ACT) programme in Bangladesh and builds on ACT’s work in five South Asian countries. This was a DFID–funded technical assistance programme. One of ACT’s particular focus was the development of climate resilient agriculture. It was in this context that the programme adopted and developed a value chain approach to assess climate impacts on agriculture and identify actions to mitigate the impacts and / or adapt production and marketing practices and policies. This is a novel approach to utilizing agricultural value chains as a lens to better understand climate change impacts, Before initiating the Bangladesh-based research covered by this paper, this approach had been pilot tested and refined in 5 states in India, two provinces in Pakistan, and at the central level in Bangladesh. Academics, development practitioners, sectoral experts, donors and government bodies jointly designed the methodology and the results are accepted by both the government bodies and the donors.

Therefore, it would be extremely useful to have specific comments, which could help to revise any section of this research work. All the authors are very open to receiving productive comments.

 Reviewer 2:

In the article, authors dealt with an interesting research topic. In my opinion, the article is underdeveloped. It seems chaotic. Please follow the comments below.

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Reviewer’s comments

Authors’ response

1

Abstract:

Line 16-18. I think, these two sentences need to be deleted. I suggest shortening an abstract.

Line 16-18 is the scene setter. We have revised them and reorganised the abstract and shortened it by almost 100 words.

2

Introduction:

Please add your comment about the profitability of cotton production in Bangladesh.

The 2^nd paragraph of the introduction (between lines 50 to 60) elaborates on the profitability of cotton production. We think that paragraph contains sufficient information on why the expansion of cotton production would be economically viable for both the farmers and the country.

Please add information when the most severe weather events are most likely to happen in Bangladesh (which is related to climate change).

Thanks for picking up the point of extreme weather. We understand that climate change induced extreme weather events are important to understand climate change impact and its magnitude. However, this paper is focusing on slow onsets. Because, Climate Change problem in the study areas is predominantly one of adapting to slow-onset CC changes, rather than respond to immediate extreme weather events. We also clarified this in the main text.

3

Materials and methods:

Figure 2. Replace "i", "ii" with Arabic or Roman numerals

According to the MDPI author’s guideline, “For figures with more than one part, the panels should be labelled a, b, c, d, etc.” We amended Figure 2 according to the guideline.

Line 172: I suggest that add a map of Bangladesh and mark a location of the studied regions.

We have a map in our original research report. Maps are certainly very useful to introduce readers to the study site. However, in the case of this research article, a map neither would bear any significance nor would increase the value of the research. Therefore, we decided not to use a map for this article.

Line 185: What means „The first fieldwork was shorter and focused primarily on piloting and gathering an in186 depth understanding of the cotton value chain in the region.”.. how was this information obtained? using a survey? Record this information at this point in the article, not later.

Thanks very much for pointing this out. We have elaborated the data collection section to improve clarity on information gathering. We think, all the information you identified are now included in this section.

4

Results:

There is no information showing the trend of cotton yield change over time due to climate change.

Showing climate change impact through crop’s yield trend is certainly useful in many cases, particularly where variables are limited and controllable. However, that is not the case here, which we explain in the following paragraph. More importantly, showing cotton yield trend to demonstrate climate change is not the scope of this research. Rather this research is projecting the future and trying to understand how the projected changes could impact future cotton production and what actions need to be taken. Besides, we used weather data to show changes pattern of temperature and rainfall and their seasonal variabilities.

Moreover, annual cotton yield data would not provide insights that would help understand climate change impact. There are three main reasons why this is so: 1) cotton seeds are sourced from agro corporates who continuously upgrade their seeds at their laboratories. Different varieties have different properties and production capacity. Farmers use different seeds every year. 2) As highlighted in the value chain approach, the higher (or lower) yields would not only depend on seeds, but also the types of pesticides, fertilizers, nutrients, sunlight, moisture, and myriad other factors. It would not be possible to correct any yield data to account for the influence of all these variables. 3) In Bangladesh, culturally, farmers prioritise rice as their main crop. Thus, cotton is in many cases produced on abandoned lands, which are relatively drier and less fertile.

Thus, a trend of cotton yield in Bangladesh would give a false sense of climate change.

5

Discussion:

The article did not discuss the results. The discussion is about comparing your own results with those of other researchers. Please refer to important publications on similar topics.

This research is one of the pioneering works using a value change approach to develop climate resilient agriculture. Regular research on climate change and agriculture are primarily (often solely) focused on farm activities, up to the point of harvest. This research adopts an integrated approach, goes off-farm to understand the whole value chain, its stakeholders, and other associated bottlenecks, and examines these through a climate change lens. Therefore, because this is a novel methodology, we do not have many other academic works to refer to.

This paper explains the experience of the Action on Climate Today (ACT) programme in Bangladesh. ACT’s work in five South Asian countries is the foundation of this research. ACT is a DFID – funded technical assistance programme particularly focuses on the development of climate resilient agriculture using a value chain approach, which has been pilot tested in 5 states in India, two provinces in Pakistan, and at the central level in Bangladesh. Academic, practitioners, international experts, donors and government bodies, jointly designed the methodology and both the government bodies and the donors accepted the results. One of the references (Croxton, Pal and Prabhakar, 2019) does provide a detailed description of the value chain approach methodology, including some further examples of how it has been used in practice.

Reviewer 3:

The title and subject is appropriate for the journal.

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Reviewer’s comments

Authors’ response

1

The abstract is correctly structured and the objective of the work is advanced. No citations should be added to the abstract.

We have removed the citation and amended the abstract to respond to the other two reviewers and comply with the MDPI author’s guideline.

2

The introduction contextualizes the topic, presents the objective and parts of the work. Regarding format, the first appointment must be [1], not [3] and they must follow in order (1, 2, 3…). In addition, there are unnumbered citations such as line 69 (Hossain et al., 2019). The citation format of all work should be reviewed.

Thanks very much for the notification. We have reviewed the citation as you pointed out.

3

What is the source of figure 1? And the 2?

We have added both the references.

4

The literary review is scarce and with few sources. Further previous work on value chain, climate risks in agriculture and resilience in agriculture sector should be sought. This section should be improved.

This research is a pioneering work using value This research is one of the pioneering works using a value change approach to develop climate resilient agriculture. Regular research on climate change and agriculture are primarily (often solely) focused on farm activities, up to the point of harvest. This research adopts an integrated approach, goes off-farm to understand the whole value chain, its stakeholders, and other associated bottlenecks, and examines these through a climate change lens. Therefore, because this is a novel methodology, we do not have many other academic works to refer to.

This paper explains the experience of the Action on Climate Today (ACT) programme in Bangladesh. ACT’s work in five South Asian countries is the foundation of this research. ACT is a DFID – funded technical assistance programme particularly focuses on the development of climate resilient agriculture using a value chain approach, an approach, which has been pilot tested in five states in India, two provinces in Pakistan, and at the central level in Bangladesh. Academic, practitioners, international experts, donors and government bodies, jointly designed the methodology and both the government bodies and the donors have accepted the results. One of the references (Croxton, Pal and Prabhakar, 2019) does provide a detailed description of the value chain approach methodology, including some further examples of how it has been used in practice.

5

The methodology speaks of a focus group of 75 farmers. More information on the investigated group should be given.

Thanks very much for pointing this out. We have added information in the methodology section

6

The results section, and especially the discussion, is extensive and detailed.

Thank you for your comment. We have revised those sections slightly to address comments of the other two reviewers.

7

The work will be suitable for publication once the theoretical review is improved.

We appreciate your time and effort in reviewing the article.