An Analysis of the Acceptance of Water Management Systems among Smallholder Farmers in Numbi, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The typification in the title "formal water management" is not defined throughout the article. What does this mean for the authors and as an object of study? The fact of asking the public about their irrigation practices cannot be understood as "formal water management". On a farm, even a subsistence one, water management encompasses all uses of water in quantitative and qualitative dimensions, irrigation is only one aspect.

The keywords must be changed, as some already appear in the title and others do not reflect the article's theme, for example: sustainable agriculture and climate change resilience.

There is no point in having two objectives in one article, as 1.2 and 1.3 are practically the same. You should only have one aim.

Lines 163-165- Reference is missing

Table 3.1- It can be used as supplementary material to make the article more streamlined

Results- You cannot have the Results item with just two tables and no presentation of the results. Authors must review this item and present the results in written form. The Results are presented in the Discussion item at various times, which is a writing error.

Discussion- Authors must critically discuss their results, not just cite other studies without comparing them with the results. There is also a lot of repetition in the way the paragraphs are written, especially in item 5.2. It must be corrected.

 

 

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review the manuscript. I hope we attend all the recommendations to your satisfaction. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find attached the responses to your review comments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. 3.1.1 in the article should become 3.1 according to the paragraph structure.

2.  Comprising 58, or 2% of the study population should be 58.2% according to the data in the table.

3. 5.2, as highlighted in Table 2, should be Table 4.2; in addition, Table 11, which appears in the last paragraph of Section 5.2, should be double-checked.

4. It is considered more reasonable to put 5.1 in 4.1 and 5.2 in 4.2 in the discussion, and delete the original chapter 5.

 

5. The research methodology and the discussion of the results as a whole are worthy of recognition, and I hope that the authors will revise the format of the whole paper.

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find attached the response to your review comments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The Study Limitations item must be part of the Discussion and before the Conclusion.