Alternative Food Networks in Food System Transition—Values, Motivation, and Capacity Building among Young Swedish Market Gardeners

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your manuscript. The topic is most interesting and very actual. The diversity of the whole food supply/value chains will not develop without various alternatives, which will also better the food system resilience.

The development of alternative food networks and chains in a global phenomena. Your input with market gardening is very much needed.

There is anyway my request for couple of minor revisions, all necessary and easy to make.

1. citations

• when citing one sentence you mark the number before the full stop (see e.g., lines 117-120, which is perfectly well: However.....systems (11).
• when citing several sentences you mark the number after the full stop of the last sentence. (now this is not from your manuscript, just my example):  Swedish.............consumers. Finnish......farmers. Norwegian.........consumers. (21)  Now that covers all three sentences
• you have some parts in your text, where the citations are not clear: does the citation nro 7 cover all text on lines 56-62. That text cannot be anyway your own. Citation nro 20, does it cover lines 156-168?
• line 151 .....represents 7% of all....    Where did you get that figure?
• Go through the whole text and correct the citations

2. Results

 be precise with all quantitative information. Do not write "Multiple cases were studied" line 194. How many cases? "around 40 different" line 205. is it 39 or 40 or 41? "The coding was repeated several times" . line 208. How many times?  "Some.....some" line 205. how many were?

Remember this is science and your research has to be repeated if needed. Now with quite insufficient information.

3. Title

your title includes words values and motivation. Make sure that you write enough of those in your results. Now e.g., add something about the motives

 

4. visualization

you have plenty of information. To improve readers' ability to understand, you could add a table, where you present the results with the demography of the participants, or of something else. It helps as you know.

 

5. Discussion

read once more your discussion and think does it give enough importance and glory to your work. Discussion is the most important part of a paper. Yours is well written and you have compared the results to the literature. Check is there any similar kind of studies available. I know that there's a lot of studies about alternative value/supply chains and networks. Compare your method or results with those. They give much more credibility to your work than some old theory.

After these words, I just want to say that, well done. The novelty with the market gardeners is just great. To make your paper even better, work a bit more with it and be more precise with aforementioned details 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors of the paper Alternative food networks in food system transition - values, motivation, and capacity building among young Swedish market gardeners present a relevant topic, especially since the sustainability of the food system is a priority for all of us.

Concepts, bibliographic sources and citations are appropriately mentioned in the paper. For example, "the presence of niche players is suggested to be an important factor in the processes of technological and social transition [4,5]", "ecology of food systems" [9], "the transition to more sustainable food systems will also require , new forms of knowledge and new learning processes [16] ”are some examples reflected by the authors of the research in the paper.

The research methodology is properly described, the research authors presenting the research tools, methods and models used in the paper. For example, the qualitative research model used was based "on cases, in order to better understand and interpret aspects that are difficult to measure quantitatively [24]". Moreover, the interview-based method demonstrates the accuracy of the information provided by the interviewees.

The results of the research are presented appropriately, the study presents the skills identified for people involved in gardening, including the barriers faced by market gardeners who support and promote sustainable agricultural systems (agro ecological). However, we suggest that the authors of the research present in a separate paragraph the presentation of the personal scientific contributions resulting from the research as a contribution to the literature.

The conclusions are presented by the authors of the research clearly, the authors presenting that "young vegetable growers who are engaged in gardening are social entrepreneurs" with direct implications in "changing the food system and a greener sustainable horticultural basis." However, we suggest that the authors of the research also complete the limitations of the study, as well as the future research that the research authors intend to carry out continuously in the future.

We congratulate the research team for the relevant topic developed in the paper, and after review according to the above, we propose for acceptance the paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf