Assessment of Economic Efficiency and Its Determents for Mixed Crop Livestock Production under Dryland Agriculture System in the Western Zone of Tamil Nadu, India

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This work assessed the economic efficiency of Indian farms operating in 2020-2022. Overall, the work is informative, the methods are adequate, and the results seem to be reliable. I have a few comments below:

1. I wish the authors could clearly state the objectives of this work in the introduction.

2. The authors' presentation of Tobit regression is not clear. Understandably, the type 1 model is used. However, there are typos in introducing parameters. Important elements for the results of Tobit regression such as censored lower and upper cutpoints or significance were surprisingly not reported.

3. Small format revisions as well as scanning for typos are required all over the manuscript. For example in lines 89-124, the citation at the beginning of a sentence should be clarified following the format of the journal.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

The paper is well written and presents an interesting study on the of economic efficiency and its determents for mixed crop and livestock production under dryland agriculture system in India.

More explanation of the terms "farm technical, distribution and economic efficiency" in the terms of a crop livestock production is missing.

Figure 1 presents an interesting scheme prepared by the authors. However, all four parts (a, b, c and d, especially part d) are missing the explanatory text under the scheme. Part d

part (d) is more appropriate to represent a linear economy than a circular economy. It is not clear what is shown in the middle of the loop (circle) and what does this loop symbolize? - is it food waste recycling? How does part d of the figure relate to the variables included in the Tobit regression model, such as recycle, redesign and reduce?

The Figure 2 format is a little bit untidy generally. The map is unclear - which ones from the left map are shown on the right map? The text on the right map is illegible.

The schematic presentation of the DEA results in Figure 10, Figure11, and Figure12 looks impressive, but the text is barely visible and needs to be corrected.

There is a lack of feedback in the discussion of the results to the existing literature in the Discussion section. Please modify it.

 

The limitations of the study should be included, where the recommendations should be drawn more specifically. Describe the research limitations (Introduction or Conclusion).

Sources [1] and [2] do not provide information on the changes in fertilizer use referred to in the text.
In the section „References“:
The description of Reference 18 needs to be adjusted according to the journal's instructions.
Both references 26 and 47 - Not Found

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

I did not find a clearly formulated purpose of the research study in the Abstract. The authors generally wrote what they did, but it would be good to state clearly the purpose of these activities. The same is true of the main body of the article; here, too, I did not find a clearly formulated purpose of the research, but only general digressions regarding the importance of the research undertaken for the region under consideration. Regardless of the exact formulation of the general purpose of the research / research study, it would also be worth writing in the content of the work what was the scientific (cognitive) and utilitarian (useful) purpose of the research study. Therefore, I also propose to write: "The scientific aim of the study was ..." and "The utilitarian aim of the study was ...". In addition, I propose to formulate a research problem that was solved by the authors. In the summary of the research problem, a gap in the current state of knowledge can be indicated, which the authors try to fill through their research. In my opinion, the considerations presented by the authors in the final part of the Introduction allow both to formulate the research problem and to indicate the gap in the research area under consideration. You just have to call them a research problem in the article.

If the authors consider dryland agriculture regions in the research study and provide the average amount of precipitation, then maybe it would be worthwhile to also provide the amount of precipitation for regions in the country that are not included in dryland.

Is it possible to record the currency in which fertilizer prices, manual labor costs and other data are given in a different way than that specified in lines 55-57? Such units (signs) are incomprehensible to a large part of readers, so it is worth writing them in a more accessible way. A similar remark applies to the considerations presented in lines 415-416.

In line 96, you can start a sentence with the author of the article with a given number, i.e.: Author [14]. Starting a sentence with [14] looks a bit awkward. The situation is similar in the case of a sentence starting on lines 116, 124 and others. On the other hand, the sentence beginning in line 113 should be worded in such a way that it does not start with a citation of four publications. These citations can be included at the end of the sentence, but you just need to rewrite the sentence.

In some sentences, it would be better to choose the words and terms used better. For example, in lines 174-175 in the sentence "A cross-sectional research methodology was employed in this study ..." instead of the word "employed" a more accurate term in English could be chosen.

I don't understand why there are two surfaces in Figure 2. The surface on the right includes the three study regions mentioned in the text. However, I don't know what the surface on the left represents and why there is an arrow between the two surfaces. What did the authors mean by presenting such a summary of information in Figure 2?

The authors use the acronym DMU many times in the article, but I could not find the full name of this term anywhere. Please complete. Of course, it can be assumed that all readers know what the acronym DMU means, but it would be better to give a detailed description of DMU as a reminder. A similar note applies to the CV acronym, so it would be a good idea to provide its full name when using CV for the first time.

In Figures 4-7, in my opinion, the given years should be supplemented with an additional description. If the periods 2011-2012, 2012-2013, etc. are included, then full years overlap, which is obviously wrong. Therefore, instead of the axis of abscissae (x) - Year, it would be worth writing "Season".

In Figure 5, on the ordinate (y) axis, it would be worth specifying the unit. Instead of "Tonne" you could write "Tonne/season".

In Figures 4 and 5, the linear curve is barely visible, so I'm not sure if there is a need to plot it. The more so if the value of the coefficient of determination (r²) and possibly the form of the function are not given in the Figures.

Why is one season, i.e. 2018-2019, not included in Figures 6 and 7? The research data for the western zone of India therefore covers 9 seasons, and for the whole country 10 seasons.

Some numbers in the description of Table 4 (paragraph starting from line 375) and directly in Table 4 do not agree. It is worth correcting this information. In addition, some data in Table 4 do not match. For example, in the Fodder/feed column, a maximum of 3,414.12 is given, while in the test data summary, the highest value is 3,413.83. It is worth correcting the data given in Table 4.

I don't know how to interpret the units in Table 4. If Seed in (kg), is it kilograms per farm, per hectare, per year, or some other unit?

A similar question for Table 4 relates to the parameters of the given hours. In hours related to what parameter? Some units are given in other Tables in the article, but finding them may be difficult for the reader, so it is worth providing the correct form of the unit in the mentioned Table 4.

The authors developed considerations in the study that included the assessment of technical efficiency and allocative efficiency. I think that in the Materials and Methods chapter it would be worthwhile to provide short definitions / interpretations of the terms: technical efficiency and allocative efficiency. It can be assumed that all readers remember perfectly well what these terms mean, but in my opinion such an assumption may be incorrect. All the more so if technical efficiency and allocative efficiency can be calculated, hence it is worth recalling the principles of these calculations.

If the authors take into account working hours of machines / tractors and manual work hours in the analysis, I would like to know how these values were examined / calculated. Was working time calculated directly by farmers on farms, or were the authors of the article involved in the monitoring of work on farms and the calculation of working time (labor)?

In Table 5, I suggest writing in what units the individual parameters are given (considered). Of course, in the case of the age of farmers, one can guess that it is in years, while in the case of other parameters, it is more difficult to clearly determine the unit.

I suggest that when writing about percentages, use one and the same unit in the article, i.e. % instead of "per cent". The authors use two forms of spelling percentages in the text, which makes it difficult to read and analyze the text.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf