Farmers’ Attitudes towards Irrigating Crops with Reclaimed Water in the Framework of a Circular Economy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is very interesting and follows a theme framed on Agronomy. It is well conceived, organized and provide sufficient background. However some points have yet to be improved.

- The study area needs more information, namely the number of farms, practiced cultures, irrigated area and type of irrigation or type of used water in each two sub-areas. Some of this information is scattered throughout the various points of the article, but should be focused in section 2.1. Study area.

- More detail is needed about the used guides for the first 5 interviews and for the focus group developed afterwards, namely its structure and the topics on which they were structured as well as it was presented for the questionnaire.

- “In total 231 farmers were surveyed from April to June 2021.” [2.3. Quantitative research: Sample size and selection]. What is the corresponding percentage in terms of farms/farmers?

- the content of section 2.4 is initially very basic and the later content is repeated throughout the results, so the essential text of this section should be revised. Also, the treatment statistic of the gathered data is needed.

- In the results, the first sentences regarding the Farmers’ details are questionable : “The mean is relatively high considering that 71% of them are over 40 years old. These results show an ageing of the agricultural sector which does not seem to be receiving the necessary relief from younger generations.” It seems to me that this interpretation is too strong and not correct, bearing in mind that the average age of the farmers in the sample is 48 years (Table 1) and that young farmers are considered to be up to 40 years old. The figure could be correctly interpreted in relation to European statistics.

- From table 1, there are farmers with 1 year of experience. How many farmers are with this condition? Doesn't this low experience affect the results? Also there are farms with only 0.2 m2? This is correct? I suppose that it must be corrected for hectare? Still with 0.2 ha, is there a business and production logic associated with these cases that would allow their inclusion in the study?

- Most of the figures require identification of units.

- What means “sustainability” in figure 4?

- What measure figure 8 and what are the units? This is not perceptible.

- There arent’t any statistic treatment of the gathered data. Also the data is not explored according to the types of respondents. For example, is there a relationship with age, area of the holding, among other variables? He gathered data has the potential to be exploited from a statistical point of view.

- Title of section 3.3.3. needs correction, because it is wrongly split.

- The first sentence of the conclusions is confuse.

Author Response

Thank you so much for you comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper can be accepted in the present form.

Author Response

Thank you so much for all the corrections, in the document we attach you have all of them answered. Please les us know if you do delieve that and other changes are needed.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is very interesting and follows a theme framed on Agronomy. It is well conceived, organized and provide sufficient background.

The recommendations made in the previous version were considered in this new version. Only the statistical procedure and their analysis and results has to be detailed. It isn’t enough write:

“This evaluation was carried out through a statistical analysis using SPSS software to try to find statistical patterns, correlations, and groupings. A cluster analysis was done for this purpose to detect direct relationships among variables and group those directly related. Nevertheless, results were not significant, so any direct relationship have been proved between most variables with acceptable errors to test significance and therefore to extrapolate results with a reasonable degree of certainty.”

In this sense, the decision of major revisions is maintained.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

 

Thank you so much for your corrections which have improved the quality of our research. We are very sorry we did not explain ourselves properly in the previous submission. This time we have added in a more detailed way the statistical procedures and analyses.  We have also changed and added different parts in the results to explain our research easier. 

Although we have  already tried our best to implement all the changes and add some extra parts to increase the potential of the research, we are completely open to any other suggestions or changes that you as a reviewer want us to make.

 

Thank you again for considering our article to be published in Agronomy.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

After my article evaluation activity I suggest some small revisions.

On page 3 I think we should change "200m" to "200mm".

I also believe that the questionnaire has been constructed in a very good way, but figures 3-4-5-7 need to be commented more accurately.

Finally, the paragraph on conclusions should contain more suggestions that can be used by policy makers to incentivize the use of purified water.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper is very interesting and follows a theme framed on Sustainability. It is very well conceived, organized and provide sufficient background. However some points have to be improved:

- The title has to be changed. The second part of the title “The Importance of the Economic Barriers” is not translated in the paper, namely in its objectives, results and conclusions.

- The study area needs more information, namely the number of farms, practiced cultures, irrigated area and type of irrigation or type of used water in each two sub-areas. Some of this information is scattered throughout the various points of the article, but should be focused in section 2.1. Study area.

- Page 5, second paragraph needs a final point on the first sentence, line 4^th.

- More detail is needed about the used guides for the first 5 interviews and for the focus group developed afterwards, namely its structure and the topics on which they were structured as well as it was presented for the questionnaire.

- “In total 231 farmers were surveyed from April to June 2021.” [2.3. Quantitative research: Sample size and selection]. What is the corresponding percentage in terms of farms/farmers?

- the content of section 2.4 is initially very basic and the later content is repeated throughout the results, so the essential text of this section should be revised. Also, the treatment statistic of the gathered data is needed.

- In the results, the first sentences regarding the Farmers’ details are questionable : “The mean is relatively high considering that 71% of them are over 40 years old. These results show an ageing of the agricultural sector which does not seem to be receiving the necessary relief from younger generations.” It seems to me that this interpretation is too strong and not correct, bearing in mind that the average age of the farmers in the sample is 48 years (Table 1) and that young farmers are considered to be up to 40 years old. The figure could be correctly interpreted in relation to European statistics.

- From table 1, there are farmers with 1 year of experience. How many farmers are with this condition? Doesn't this low experience affect the results? Also there are farms with only 0.2 m2? This is correct? I suppose that it must be corrected for hectare? Still with 0.2 ha, is there a business and production logic associated with these cases that would allow their inclusion in the study?

- Most of the figures require identification of units.

- What means “sustainability” in figure 4?

- What measure figure 8 and what are the units? This is not perceptible.

- There arent’t any statistic treatment of the gathered data. Also the data is not explored according to the types of respondents. For example, is there a relationship with age, area of the holding, among other variables? He gathered data has the potential to be exploited from a statistical point of view.

- Title of section 3.3.3. needs correction, because it is wrongly split.

- The first sentence of the conclusions is confuse.

Reviewer 3 Report

What they did can’t really be called a methodology. Only descriptive statistics are used, which is also bad. it is not advisable to calculate the average of a dichotomous variable (with a value of 1-2), 1.31 says nothing.

The whole research was built on the opinions of 5 experts. There is no hypothesis, no research gap. And the discussion does not compare the results with international literature. No statistical tests or correlation studies were performed.