Potato Farming Systems from a Social-Ecological Perspective: Identifying Key Points to Increase Resilience in a High Andean Productive Landscape

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article entitled “Social-ecological resilience in a high mountain potato farming system” provides an integrative framework to analyze agricultural challenges such as the capacity to prevent, react, and mitigate crises that affect social-ecological systems. The information presented has identified critical elements that should be incorporated into action plans. This is the next step in improving SER and, therefore, improving the life standards of this population. In this sense, we propose a transition to more agroecological systems since they are the best fit to reach sustainability in these high mountain areas. Overall, there are no major issues with the work and could be potentially accepted for publication after minor correction.

1. Update keywords.
2. The hypothesis needs to be improved in the introduction.
3. Proofread the whole text for writing style, typo, and spacing errors.

Author Response

Pasto, Nariño, Colombia, February 12, 2022

Thank you so much for your e-mail from January 13 enclosing the reviewers’ corrections and suggestions. We have carefully revised and corrected the manuscript accordingly. Please, find attached a point-by-point response to these comments. We hope that you find these responses satisfactory and the manuscript acceptable for publication.    

 

We hereby submit our revised manuscript modified.

Sincerely,

 

Eliana Martinez

[email protected]

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Review report by Prof. Nigussie Dechassa

Manuscript Title

Social-ecological resilience in a high mountain potato farming

The Title of the research is not informative enough about the work done and the results presented. It is better if the researchers make the Title somewhat more descriptive. “Social and ecological resilience in a high mountain potato farming system” as a reflection of what or in what perspective or as influenced by what or through what approach?

Also there is no need to hyphenate the terms “social-ecological”. Just write this concept as “Social and ecological”, instead.

 

1. Abstract

An abstract should begin with a clear problem statement to justify the research. But, this abstracts lacks that brief problem statement and justification.

The abstract rather starts by presenting a solution to a problem whatever it might be. If you have already a solution, what did you have to do the research?

Please, improve the beginning of the Abstract as suggested.

 

Read lines 13 –15

“Social-ecological resilience (SER), understood as the capacity to prevent, react to, and mitigate crises that affect social-ecological systems, provides an integrative framework to analyze agricultural challenges.”

Please, add the preposition “to” after the term react.

 

Lines 15–16

Check the meaning of this statement “Based on this approach potato grower from the Nariño area, in southwestern Colombia, assessed SER in their farming systems.”

Question! This statement gives the meaning that it was the farmers who assessed SER or it was the farmers who were the researchers? Is this true? If not, please, modify the statement to reflect what is true?

Lack of objective

The abstract also lacks a clear objective of the study. Please, briefly indicate the objective of the study.

 

Lines 16–18

“Following the methodology proposed by the 16 UNU-IAS (2014), potato producers´ thoughts and perceptions were evaluated by implementing 11 workshops in seven municipalities of this region.”

I do not think conducting 11 workshops can be considered a methodology. Please, clearly indicate the methodology.

The indicated results in the abstract lack quantitative data. Please, include some key quantitative data.

Conclusion and implication lacking at the end of the abstract

The abstract lacks a clear conclusion of the salient (major) findings of the research.

The abstract lacks a statement of the implications of the key findings of the study.

 

Lines 32–33

Keywords

The authors have listed words that are already found in the Title as keywords. For example, “Social-ecological resilience (SER)”, and “potato farming system” are words that are already found in the Title and considered keywords. Words that are found in the Title need not be repeatedly listed as keywords. Rather, the authors should list as “keywords” other words that are important in describing the results of the study.

2. Introduction

Lines 66–67

Contemporary work dealing with strategies to improve the living standards of a population instead have focused on incorporate adaptive management.

Here, for grammatical purpose, change the verb “incorporate” in the above sentence to “incorporating”.

Lines 86–87

……More research is still needed though since these studies have shown that there.

Delete the conjunction “though”, which is redundant here.

Line 96

…. Agrobiodiversity and natural resource management (Figure 1).

Delete the above phrase because it is an incomplete sentence and there is no need to refer to a Figure in an Introduction of a scientific paper.

Lines 103–110

Please, move this Figure to the section of “Materials and Methods”

Please, indicate the significance of your study (who will benefit? How? from the output of the research?).

What were the research questions?

 

Materials and Methods

How were the 252 potato growing farmers selected or sampled? Were they purposely sampled? Randomly sampled?

Thus, indicate the sampling design you used!

Lines 148–149

“The following results were obtained from the information provided by the potato 148 growers that joined the workshops.” Delete this statement!!

Results

Lines 165–166

Access to water (i.e., governance) understood as the social ecological systems that regulate and guaranty equity and efficiency.

Please, replace the wrongly written term “guaranty” to the correct form “guarantee”

 

Lines 167–170

 “…and report: 1. Water availability deficits; 2. Institutional inefficiency to distribute and manage the resource; 3. Community inability to equitably distribute water resources; and 4. Insufficient infrastructure for equitable water distribution.”

The above phrases seem not to give any sense. Please, construct the phrases into meaningful sentences that you wanted to describe.

Line 203

Access to land and equity scored averaged 3.3 ± 0.9 and 3.1 ± 1.1, respectively.

Change the verb “scored” to “score”.

Lines 208–210

“…Regarding equity, participants overall ?????? were neutral but did not feel they were discriminated against and described their participatory activities as equitable in terms of access 209 and opportunities.”

Perhaps there is a missing term in this sentence. Could it be “score”? Check out and correct.

 

Lines 235–238 (Problem of writing discussion points in the Section of Results)

 

“On the other hand, participants also noted deficits in infrastructure. For them, current infrastructure is inadequate or insufficient to meet their daily requirements (2.8 ± 0.9) (Figure 5, Table A3)). This limits their competitiveness and reduces their chances of increasing their livelihood portfolio”. This last statement is a point of discussion.

 

Lines 239–243 (Problem of writing discussion points in the Section of Results)

When it comes to wellbeing, the relationship between natural resources and people´s health status received a score of 2.6 ± 1.0 (Figure 5, Table A3). This low rate was associated with spraying excessive amounts of agrochemicals in their crops and the absence of sewerage and basic sanitation systems, which negatively affects population welfare. This last statement is a point of discussion.

 

Lines 252–256 (Problem of writing discussion points in the Section of Results)

They also must call attention to the fact that spaces which promote dialogue between generations (i.e., transferring knowledge from the oldest to the youngest) are disappearing. This is contributing to the loss of identity and motivation to settle down in these territories affecting generational replacement processes, especially in younger individuals. This last statement is a point of discussion.

 

Lines 292–300 (Problem of writing discussion points in the Section of Results)

Regarding environmental resilience, one of the main concerns mentioned was climate change. Most of the producers do not have access to irrigation systems and their planting calendars are synchronized with the beginning of the rainy season. Their concerns about changing weather patterns arises from this narrative. The probability of crop loses and failure due to droughts or floods has drastically increased. Accordingly, their capacity to react to frost and hailstorms is minimal. These conditions have forced them to rethink and pursue alternatives to generate income, such as dairy farming as a livelihood strategy. For farmer that have switched, they view dairy farming as a permanent and reliable income. This last statement is a point of discussion.

 

If Results and Discussion are written separately, the Results section should deal only with the results and all discussions should be done in the Discussion section. But, in this paper, why did the authors include certain points of discussion already in the section of the Results? This problem is common in all sub-sections of the Results. Please, avoid this and do your discussions only in the section of the Discussion and write only about the results you found in the section of your Results.

Or if discussion points cannot be avoided in the Results section and the Journal allows, write the Results and Discussion combined.

 

Lines 492–511

The conclusion of this paper is not written as a clear home-take-away message for the readers.

It starts off with indicating the gaps that remain to be bridged, which should actually be described at the end of the conclusion, with future research outlook.

The authors should write their conclusion as clear home take-away message by including the following points.

1. Describe the salient (key or major) findings of the study and interpret them (indicate what they mean)
2. Write the implications of the key results for potato farmers, policy makers, agro-industry, etc
3. What new gaps did you find to be addressed through future research
4. What research should be done in the future to consolidate these key findings

 

The authors should incorporate the suggested changes. If this is done, the journal can be considered for publication.

 

Author Response

Pasto, Nariño, Colombia, February 12, 2022

Thank you so much for your corrections and suggestions. We have carefully revised and corrected the manuscript accordingly. Please, find attached a point-by-point response to these comments. We hope that you find these responses satisfactory and the manuscript acceptable for publication.    

 

We hereby submit our revised manuscript modified.

 

Sincerely,

 

Eliana Martinez

[email protected]

Author Response File: Author Response.docx