Policy Instruments to Improve Foreign Workforce’s Position and Social Sustainability of the Agriculture in Italy
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript entitled "Policy instruments to Improve Foreign Workforce’s position in the Italian agricultural labour market" deals with the important issue related to the sustainability of the labour market in Italy, with a special focus on agricultural employment. The authors present an overview of the labour market indicators, including the sectoral ones. The manuscript provides some scientific contribution but could benefit from including the suggestions listed bellow.
- The text flow could be improved since there are several sentences which are incomplete and thus not clear enough (for instance, the sentence in line 27);
- More keywords could be added;
- Table 1 should be translated into English;
- Throughout the text the references are missing, which is indicated by the errors in parentheses;
- Since only 16 farmers were interviewed, the authors should declare the limitations of the research related to the sample size and the conclusions they made;
- More references should be added, since a part of the research methodology, as stated by the authors, is based on the literature review.
- The employment policy recommendations should be explained in more detail.
Author Response
We thank you for the constructive comments provided. Please find below the answers to the points raised and how we tried to address them.
REVIEWER #1
- The text flow could be improved since there are several sentences which are incomplete and thus not clear enough (for instance, the sentence in line 27);
The paper was carefully reviewed and the incomplete/unclear sentences were completed and clarified.
- More keywords could be added;
We added the following key words: agricultural employment; seasonal workers; undeclared work; foreign workers.
- Table 1 should be translated into English;
This has now been done.
- Throughout the text the references are missing, which is indicated by the errors in parentheses;
We checked and corrected this as appropriate.
- Since only 16 farmers were interviewed, the authors should declare the limitations of the research related to the sample size and the conclusions they made;
We added this in the conclusion section: ‘Generalisation of results cannot be claimed as the research is based on a case study approach and a limited number of interviews, yet some conclusions can be drawn.
- More references should be added, since a part of the research methodology, as stated by the authors, is based on the literature review.
Some relevant references were added, e.g.
- Corrado A. (2011), Clandestini in the Orange Towns: Migrations and Racisms in Calabria's Agriculture. Race/Ethnicity: Mul-tidisciplinary Global Contexts, vol. 4 no. 2, 2011, https://doi.org/10.2979/racethmulglocon.4.2.19
- Sgroi F. (2022), Cooperation and innovation in Italian agribusiness between theoretical analysis and empirical evidence, Journal of Agriculture and Food Research, Volume 10, December 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jafr.2022.100406
- The employment policy recommendations should be explained in more detail.
Some more recommendations were added with further details in the conclusion section, e.g. ‘Action to improve cooperation among farmers and aggregation processes amongst employers, also through tax and social security benefits, could improve the use of joint hiring giving more stability of the employment as well as reducing and make more efficient training costs. Professional training - facilitating participation of non-native Italian workers courses through the involvement of interpreters and cultural mediators - should be organised by public authorities, also by promoting the connection between institutional agencies (schools, universities, vocational training centres) and farms capable of integrating formal training with practical activities and internships’.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe work could be much more interesting if econometric methods were used, but the current version of the work is clearly unsatisfactory. Basing conclusions solely on data averages is relatively of little value.
There are also concerns that the analyzes are based on only 16 semi-structured qualitative interviews. There are known methods in statistics that allow for calculating the minimum size of a research sample. With such a low sample, the entire article can only be treated as a case study.
It was not described what questions the analyzed farmers answered, only information that structured interviews were conducted.
To facilitate reading and interpretation of the results from the tables, it is necessary to include e.g. ANNO, SAU, SAT below the table legend. Moreover, if the publication is prepared in English, you should be consistent in this respect. Therefore, it is not allowed to use Italian terms, e.g. Dati assoluti, Numero di aziende, etc.
The bibliography is mostly literature from over 10 years ago - this element needs to be supplemented with the latest literature reports.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
We thank you for the constructive comments provided. Please find below the answers to the points raised and how we tried to address them.
The work could be much more interesting if econometric methods were used, but the current version of the work is clearly unsatisfactory. Basing conclusions solely on data averages is relatively of little value. There are also concerns that the analyzes are based on only 16 semi-structured qualitative interviews. There are known methods in statistics that allow for calculating the minimum size of a research sample. With such a low sample, the entire article can only be treated as a case study.
The study is based on a qualitative case study approach, which is now stated in the methodology section (lines 240-241) and the established case study method in Yin (2009). We have explicitly stated the limitation of the study that cannot claim (statistical) generalisation in the conclusion section (lines 328-330).
It was not described what questions the analyzed farmers answered, only information that structured interviews were conducted.
In the method section it is stated that content analysis was performed based on Allodola, 2014; Graneheim and Ludman, 2004
To facilitate reading and interpretation of the results from the tables, it is necessary to include e.g. ANNO, SAU, SAT below the table legend. Moreover, if the publication is prepared in English, you should be consistent in this respect. Therefore, it is not allowed to use Italian terms, e.g. Dati assoluti, Numero di aziende, etc.
Words in Italian were translated into English
The bibliography is mostly literature from over 10 years ago - this element needs to be supplemented with the latest literature reports.
More recent literature was added e.g. 15. Sgroi F. (2022), Cooperation and innovation in Italian agribusiness between theoretical analysis and empirical evidence, Journal of Agriculture and Food Research, Volume 10, December 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jafr.2022.100406
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper is solid but you need to improve the literature review, and comparative exploratory data analysis between OECD countries and Italy on the agriculture sector, its foreign labor force, and the related policies.
Second, the qualitative analysis is based on only 16 people, which is statistically unacceptable given the threshold of 31.
Author Response
We thank you for the constructive comments provided. Please find below the answers to the points raised and how we tried to address them.
The paper is solid but you need to improve the literature review, and comparative exploratory data analysis between OECD countries and Italy on the agriculture sector, its foreign labor force, and the related policies.
We have added more literature (e.g. Corrado A. (2011, Sgroi F. (2022)).
This study focuses only on Italy, and a comparative analysis is beyond the scope of the present study. This is now acknowledged as study limitation in the conclusion section (lines 330-333).
Second, the qualitative analysis is based on only 16 people, which is statistically unacceptable given the threshold of 31
The study is based on a qualitative, case study approach which does not aim to statistical analysis and generalisation. This is more explicitly stated (a) in the methodology section, where we explained how we came to this number of interviews and the added the relevant references (‘This number of interviews carried out was deemed sufficient based on Yin (2009) and when the point of saturation was achieved (Glaser and Strauss 1967)’) and (b) the conclusion section where we state the study’s limitation (‘Generalisation of results cannot be claimed as the research is based on a case study ap-proach and a limited number of interviews, yet some conclusions can be drawn’).
