Assessing Africa’s Agricultural TFP for Food Security and Effects on Human Development: Evidence from 35 Countries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper examines Africa’s agricultural TFP for food security and effects on human development. The number of paper examine this topic is limited in the literature, therefore in I think it is able to contribute to the literature.

In my opinion, there are two part of the paper that should be improved. First, potential heterogeneity issues and bias of DEA scores should be mentioned at least as limitation of the paper.

Second, the discussion of the results should be greatly improved and compare the results with other similar studies from Africa and other regions. I suggest checking the following papers for such a comparison:

O'Donnell, Christopher J "Nonparametric estimates of the components of productivity and profitability change in US agriculture." American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 94, (2012) pp. 873-890.

Barath, Lajos and Imre Ferto "Productivity and convergence in European agriculture." Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 68, (2017) pp. 228-248.

Reza Anik, Asif, Sanzidur Rahman and Jaba Rani Sarker "Five decades of productivity and efficiency changes in world agriculture (1969–2013)." Agriculture, Vol. 10, (2020) pp. 200.

 Barath, Lajos and Imre Ferto "Accounting for TFP Growth in Global Agriculture-a Common-Factor-Approach-Based TFP Estimation." AGRIS on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics, Vol. 10, (2020) pp. 3-13.

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks to the authors and editors of Sustainability for the opportunity to read and review the manuscript of ‘Assessing Africa’s agricultural TFP for food security and effects on human development: Evidence from 35 countries’ sustainability-1701478.

According to the abstract ‘This paper estimates TFP growth and assesses its impact on human development in Africa. … Policy recommendations for improving TFP for food security and human development in Africa are provided.’

The paper offers interesting and appropriate methods, and the topic seems interesting, but it reveals serious problems and various corrections are needed to improve the current level. For instance, in several areas, including its grounding in the title, introduction, sample design, implications, etc. 

Serious problems:

• The introduction part is not adequate. The introduction should consist of background about the topic being studied, i.e. the rationale for undertaking this study for filling a concrete research gap. Research should be emphasized why was this particular study needed to fill this gap in scientific knowledge that currently exists? Describe the rationale in the context of what is known and not in this research area. The problem statement based on the previous results and the novelty of this study should also be declared here.
• Moreover, the clarification of important terms, definitions, or abbreviations (TFP, food security etc.) should be used in this paper; and a review of relevant studies which give a brief but incisive overview of the research work. The current state of the research field should be carefully reviewed and key publications cited. Please highlight some controversial and/or diverging approaches when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and the principal conclusions.
• It is not clear how the article relates to the sustainability objectives (UN SDGs) and the profile of the journal. The explanation is completely overstated. The study has a strong methodological basis, but the calculations seem to have been generated before the theoretical grounding. The (agrarian) TFP, productivity growth, and food security and safety notations are mixed and unclear within the article.
• The theoretical chapter is omitted. The theoretical background of the study should be provided with an explicit statement of the hypothesis being addressed concerning literature comparisons, outcomes, study design etc. These hypotheses are crucial to appreciating how it is related to the previous theoretical and empirical literature.
• Data selection should be explained in detail. In order to maintain the integrity, transparency and reproducibility of research records, authors must make their experimental and research data openly available either by depositing them into repositories or by publishing the files as supplementary information in this journal. The data design section does not seem to be appropriate for describing the investigation of data collection. Refer carefully to the literature on how and why this case study and the materials, and data design of the models are selected. GFSI and/or FAO databases are also suggested.
• The interpretation of the figures (Figure 1) and tables (see Table 3) are unclear and not followable. Determine and standardize the abbreviations. What does H1a mean? How is it possible that the year (Table 1) STD is 5.481348, and based on descriptive statistics HDI is negative in Table 5 and positive in Table 2? Figure 2 and 3. contains growth trends which are not crucial results, delete them.
• 99 R-squared seems to be a biased estimate. Uncontrolled data mining is the process of fitting many different models, trying many different independent variables, and primarily using statistical significance to build the final model rather than being guided by theory. This process introduces a variety of problems, including misleading coefficients and an inflated R-squared value.
• Maybe the authors should consider reframing the paper and submitting it in a more appropriate language for readers.

Additional amendments:

• The bibliography should be extended by the relevant and current (2020-2022) mainstream literature.
• Specify the methodology and note the significance level of the results (Table 10)
• The implication/conclusion chapters should go beyond the interpretation of the results. For instance: - The main objective of this study was to examine .... effects of ….. on the........, to shed light on novel research perspectives on ..... - A .................. analysis was used to calculate impacts between ..... while also taking ....... into account ….. - The advantage of the research model is that ....... - Contrary to previous approaches, we take into account -----. We found that ...... . Namely: (a), (b), (c) ....  - The methodological/theoretical implication is that ........ The findings are also important for policymakers ………. – Limitations - Future research direction, etc.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This study assesses  Africa’s agricultural TFP for food security and effects on human development. The authors collected the data for  evidence from 35 countries in Africa. I believed that the authors have tried to make good effort to deliver their findings through this  manuscript. However,   this manuscript  still needs improvement in order to be qualified for getting consideration to be published in Sustainability journal.  My comments, criticisms and suggestions are as follows:

1. Introduction is good, but its flow of story is not that well-connected so that it is hard to find what are the research issues and gap of knowledge that author want to solve through this study. Therefore, the objectives of the study are also vague. 
2.  Methodology is not sufficient. The elaboration is not that detailed.  There is no description on how the sampling process for the study in 35 countries in Africa. Suddenly, the authors jumped to write the study design without saying any sampling process. It is also become a question on how many years data  taken for the study  from the samples or respondents in 35 countries in Africa.
3. I suggest the authors declare it clearly because in the Table 1, it seems the data taken for 2010 only. It also needs the reasons on why the authors display the Table 4. I think the results in Table 4 is not that crucial for the study since it just shows the TFP annual mean on the year basis.
4. In the summary, I believed that the authors need to further discuss the the correlation between TFP agriculture on the overall improved  development of human capabilities. 
5. Last but not least, I emphasized the need for polishing English throughout this manuscript.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript deals with the factors which contribute to the economic growt of countries through the lenses of quantitative methods of efficiency assessment of agriculture. The analysis is country based and includes a variety of important factors for the analysis. 

The manuscript is well organised and presented, so as well the discussion is well conducted and maybe deserves just some hints on possible limitations. 

I would also suggest to follow up some literature on previous studies in the field, here some suggestions: 

Toma, P., Miglietta, P. P., Zurlini, G., Valente, D., & Petrosillo, I. (2017). A non-parametric bootstrap-data envelopment analysis approach for environmental policy planning and management of agricultural efficiency in EU countries. Ecological indicators, 83, 132-143.

Balezentis, T., Ribasauskiene, E., Morkunas, M., Volkov, A., Streimikiene, D., & Toma, P. (2020). Young farmers’ support under the Common Agricultural Policy and sustainability of rural regions: Evidence from Lithuania. Land Use Policy, 94, 104542.

 

Author Response

Please see attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks to the authors and editors of Sustainability for the opportunity to read and review the manuscript of ‘Assessing Africa’s agricultural TFP for food security and effects on human development: Evidence from 35 countries’ sustainability-1701478.

However, the manuscript improved based on the suggestions, it can be only accepted after minor changes because of the following issues and difficulties:

• The design of Figure 1 needs corrections. Do not let the words slip into a new line (i.e. productivity y).
• Maybe the authors should consider reframing the paper and submitting it in a more appropriate language for readers. MDPI’s proofreading service is strongly suggested.
• Review the names of the variables and use the same abbreviations and describe them in the first appearance everywhere (see tables and figures) for clarity (e.g. development index, HDI, lnHD_index etc).
• Resize the equations and contents for the same sizes based on the template of the journal.
• Figure 4, specify the left and right axis of figures at notes.

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf