What Influences Farmer’s Adoption Lag for Soil and Water Conservation Practices? Evidence from Sio-Malaba Malakisi River Basin of Kenya and Uganda Borders

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors submit a manuscript describing problem with implementation of Soil and Water Conservation Practices in Sio-Malaba-Malakisi River Basin. The analysis based on questionnaires form and interview with farmers. With total of 506 survey participants.

Line 62: “[17]–[27],” better [17-27], check all manuscript.

Line 65: It will be better if You could present “the aim of Your study at the end of chapter: introduction”

Line 91: this is not necessary to put citation in separate brackets, You can try [39, 40] instead [39], [40], check all manuscript.

Line 135: Not well formatted, size of fonts, what for You have used dots?

In Table 5. “Factors influencing adoption lag of individual SWCPs.” You presented important data, unfortunately data in table look messy and it is not easy to read, please try to use heat map or PCA analysis with data presentation on figures.

Line 223, 226: “Figures in parentheses are standard errors. ***, **, * represents significance at 1%, 5%, and 10% 223 level, respectively.” What kind of statistical test did You have used? It should be mentioned in chapter with method.

Line 299 Chapter name is “Summary and conclusions” according instructions for author You should use name “Conclusions”.

The analysis  will be more interesting  if You could present data: farm size, main crops and use them for analysis.

You should present example of questionnaire form (empty) as supplementary data file.

To summarize my recommendation, the manuscript has potential interest but in the present form is not adequate and need some changes mentioned above.   

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Hello. 

Kindly receive the attached responses to your comments.

Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

The article is descriptive.

 I would appreciate if, in the Introduction, you could include a few paragraphs explaining the national or even international policies (FAO, for example) that are followed in the study area to make farmers aware of the benefits of applying soil and water conservation measures. Is there any public information? With which frequency farmers are informed by public agricultural extension services about the benefits of these practices? Is there a public policy for subsidies to facilitate the adoption of conservation practices? 

Are farmers aware of the ecosystem services provided by soil and water conservation techniques? What are the environmental policies related to the use of agricultural land in these areas? Are they informed? 

I would appreciate if you could contextualize the article by providing information on farmers' knowledge (or lack of knwledge and why) of these aspects. 

Thank you very much.

Yours sincerely,

The Reviewer

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Please see the attached.

Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper aims to determine the adoption lag and factors that influence the adoption of SWCPs in the Sio-Malaba Malakisi River Basin. Both results and conclusions are consistent with aiming of the MS. However, some issues arise as discussed below. Overall, the publication of the MS should be reconsidered after minor revisions.

Comments:

2.1 The study area: This section would gain if a map with the study area location is shown, containing information on land cover. This would help to better understand the agricultural reality on the Basin.

3.1. Socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the respondents: How many respondents adopt more the one SWCP? How may adopt more than 2? (and so on) It is important to assess the differences in terms of number of techniques adopted between farmers.

Table 3: Columns unit is missing (I assume “years”)

3.2.3. Factors influencing adoption lag of soil and water conservation practices: Do the authors assessed what happens if more than one practices are adopted? If so, what would be the lag since the last practices adopted?

Author Response

Dear Edidor, 

Kindly receive below the point-by-point responses to the reviewer's comments:

2.1: the map of the study area has been added. See line 127.

3.1: A figure indicating the number of farmers and their SWCPs combinations adopted has been added. See line 233 and line 236.

Table 3: Unit of lags has been added (years). Please see table 3.

3.2.3: The authors did not assess what happens if more than 1 SWCPs are adopted since the objective of the study was to assess what influences the lags of adoption of each SWCP adopted by households. However, the authors acknowledge that this would be an interesting study and thus recommend further studies on the adoption lag of SWCPs to assess what happens when more than 1 SWCPs are adopted and also assess lags since the last SWCPs is adopted. Please see line 375.

Moreover, A new author has been added who produced the map of the study area, Mathew Herrnegger⁴   

^{Kindly add him in the contribution to the paper section too.}

^{Thank you very much.}

^{The authors.} 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx