Effect of Consumers’ Acceptance of Indigenous Leafy Vegetables and Their Contribution to Household Food Security

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. The literature review should be improved, where the author needs to add some paragraphs to state the difference/gap between this paper with literature. It seems in the literature review section the author mentioned some scholars have done some similar research.

 

2. For the method, endogenous switching probit model, what is Z and X in the equations? Also, you mentioned, the Z and X can overlap, but need to have at least one variable in Z is required not to be included in X. If I understand correctly, you have the same variables for both X and Z, will it cause some issues in model?

                                                                                           

Minor suggestions

1. In “It also has a population of 4, 04 million people, with agriculture accounting for 72% of the

workforce [24]”, it should be 4.04 million.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Please, refer to the comments in the attached file. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The aim of the research undertaken by the authors of this article was to assess the impact of consumer acceptance of indigenous leafy vegetables, as well as their contribution to household food security.

 

I believe that the article in its current form should not be published, as it requires many changes and additional explanations. I put the details below:

 

1. The article lacks an abstract.

 

2. Some sentences are formulated in such a way that the information contained in them is not very precise or not fully understood.

For example, on page 1, a value of 204 million people is given, but it is not clear whether this applies to the entire world population or just Africa. In the rows below, 26% and 28% are quoted, here too it is not entirely clear whether this applies only to South Africa or all of Africa.

 

On page 3, the authors cite "According to the World Health Organization (WHO) [9], a healthy diet protects the body against malnutrition, hidden hunger, and micronutrient deficiency diseases such as stroke, cancer, and diabetes." Are diseases such as stroke, cancer and diabetes really diseases resulting from micronutrient deficiencies?

 

The authors quote below "In this regard, indigenous leafy vegetables can provide full nutrient requirements since they comprise countless species of vegetables [20]". If these vegetables can provide the full needs of the human body for nutrients, it would be worth presenting the composition of an exemplary diet based on these vegetables, which would cover the human need for all nutrients.

 

Below the authors quote "as unhygienic foods as little stones are detected when eating them". I do not understand where these stones in these vegetables come from?

 

On page 5, the authors quote "Other foods grown by farmers in Mpumalanga include sugar...". Isn't sugar grown?

 

Below the authors cite "Mpumalanga is known for its dairy cattle, beef, and wool production". It is not entirely clear whether it is sheep farming for wool or industrial production of wool?

 

 

3. I believe that the aim of the work has been achieved in half. There is a lack of data and analysis related to the impact of consumer acceptance of indigenous leafy vegetables.

For example, what percentage of consumers in rural and urban households like/dislike these vegetables? What is the level of sensory acceptability of these vegetables?

It would be good to specify these preferences to some specific vegetables from this group.

 

4. In Table 3, apart from the values indicating the number of households, it would also be worthwhile to provide percentage values.

 

5. On page 8 the authors state that "this might imply that the consumption of indigenous leafy vegetables was mediocre". I do not know on the basis of which data the authors make such a statement, because I have not found information that the questions in Table 3 apply only to ILV. If these questions also concern other categories of food, then such wording is incorrect.

 

6. Table 4 lacks many explanations, which makes it impossible to interpret and analyze the results from this table. For example, some numerical values are marked *; **; ***, no explanation what they mean. The authors also do not specify the significance level at which they assume that a given indicator had a statistically significant impact. Also with "CONSUMPTION OF INDIV"; "FOOD SECURE"; "FOOD INSECURE" the abbreviation "coef." is used, does this abbreviation mean the α, β1, β0 indices from equations (1), (2), (3) respectively? - it's not entirely clear.

 

7. In addition, most of the variables in Table 4 require additional explanation. For example, the variable size of households, is it determined by the number of people in a household or by the size of a farm? If this is the number of people in a household, it would be good to specify what size farms were included in these statistics.

Other variables, for example "Wage/salary"; do the "WEATHINDEX" also require more explanation, what levels indicate that the salary is low, medium or high?, or what levels make up the level of wealth?

 

8. Additional explanations should be included for all variables listed in Table 4, as only then people outside of Africa could relate to the discussion of the results, as well as the formulated conclusions.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors took into account most of my comments. But still not everything is clear to me. For example:

 

1. "WEATHINDEX" - the authors explain that it is a "composite measure of the cumulative living standard of a houshold". It would be worth explaining in the text what values of this indicator may indicate that it is, for example, a high, medium or low standard of living?

 

2. Below table 4, the authors explain that "***, **, * Indicate significance at 1%, 5%, and 10% level, respectively". In my opinion it should be: "***, **, * - statistically significant at the level of: P<0.01; P<0.05; P<0.10", respectively.

 

3. The new data in Table 2 and the analysis of these data in lines 309-311 are puzzling and incomprehensible to me. For example, the authors report that the average age of "Age of household head" consumers was 1.24 and non-consumers 1.29. So just over 1 year?

In addition, the authors report that 'the average number of years spent by consumers in schools is 35.36'. How long does schooling last in South Africa?

 

4. I also found some minor bugs. For example, the title of table 2 in lower case. In the first row of this table, the same text is repeated 2 times. The numbers of Figures is incorrect.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf