Gender-Linked Dynamics and Sustainable Small Holder Poultry Value Chains in Makueni County, Kenya

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript entitled "Socio-cultural drivers for sustainable small holder poultry value chains: A case study of Makueni County, Kenya" (sustainability-2304020) was aimed at studying the socio-cultural factors that influence small holders poultry value chains in Makueni, with a particular focus on gender roles, relations and power positions.

  

To improve the quality of the manuscript, I propose the following:

(1) Please consider clearly stating the objective of this study in the abstract of the manuscript.

(2) At the end of the Introduction section, please identify the literature gap, present the research objective(s) and discuss how this manuscript complements the growing body of literature. Please consider expanding the literature review and go beyond 25 references. Moreover, please consider elaborating a final paragraph dedicated to describing the structure of this manuscript.

(3) Line 109: Please delete "Materials and methods".

(4) Line 127: Please revise the referencing style according to the journal standards.

(5) In subsection 2.2: please consider including a table with the statistics regarding the respondents. I have checked and there is a similar table in the transcripts https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YD78S6. It would add more value the manuscript if more attention was paid to a discussion regarding the age, education level, average income of the respondents and their perspective of farm management and implication on the poultry value chain in Makueni.

(6) The manuscript should be more focused (explicitly) on the sustainability factor. The title and keywords lead the readers to believe that this is a manuscript that goes in-depth with the explanations regarding the connection between socio-cultural factors influencing small holders and sustainability in the poultry value chains. Please consider making this connection more obvious in the manuscript.

(7) In the discussion section, please compare explicitly compare your findings with those of other authors have published similar papers and highlight convergence/divergence points.

(8) In the conclusions section, please consider expanding it with more theoretical, practical and managerial implications of the research findings.

(9) The limitations of the current research should be explained in the manuscript and some possible future research avenues could be presented.

(10) Minor formatting revisions are requires all throughout the manuscript.

(11) The references list does not follow the template instructions. Therefore, I kindly ask the authors to format the references list according to the requirements of the Sustainability journal, which can also be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions#references.

Author Response

Many thanks for the comments and suggestions. These have been very useful in the revision of the paper

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1. Please complete () in line 13. Why use (?

2. Please unify the punctuation of keywords

3. What is SSA? Don't use abbreviations at the beginning of the article.

4. Why does Line36 use '[]]'? What format is it?

5. Please add a chapter (literature review: Socio-cultural drivers, sustainable food systems, livestock production in Kenya).

6. It seems that your research objectives should be quantified. Why do you choose qualitative?

7. What is your main theory?

8. Please explain the interview samples in more detail.

9. What are the interview steps?

10. What is the basis of results (the result should be derived from the data analysis. Which interviewer's point of view does each of your conclusions come from?)

11. Discussion has the same problem.

12. Please add implications, limits, and future suggestions.

Author Response

Many thanks for the comments. These have been very useful in addressing the corrections

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript was reviewed, the observations and questions are given in the attached word file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Many thanks for the comments and suggestions, they have helped in revising the manuscript

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Although the author modified them, did not explain the reason.

Therefore, I don't know what the author's reason for writing this is

Author Response

Many thanks for the very useful reviews. Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments to the manuscript 2304020 “Socio-cultural drivers for sustainable small holder poultry value chains: A case study of Makueni County, Kenya”,

 

I still have few comments and observations.

 

Abstract section

I still think that the abstract must summarize the article’s main findings and made a conclusion. I don´t see which socio-cultural results were identified.

Line 108. The sustainable Food Systems Assessment (SAFA)….. The acronym does not fit the meaning

Line 144. eight (8)… it does not make sense to repeat the number.

Line 162. The transcripts were de-identified…. I think there is a mistake.

 

Results

Again, this sections did not summarizes the main findings. It is hard to understand, here, tables or graphs with a data analysis must show the main results, instead of just write what people said.

 

Conclusions

The only socio-cultural driver or variable that I saw in this study was the gender. It is limited when somebody look at the title.

 

 

Author Response

Many thanks for the very useful review. Please see attachement

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf