Beyond Supporting Access to Land in Socio-Technical Transitions. How Polish Grassroots Initiatives Help Farmers and New Entrants in Transitioning to Sustainable Models of Agriculture

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please, see the file attached   

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The present research explores three case studies of socio-technical transitions in agri-food systems in Poland. The cases are representative of broader initiatives of sustainability transitions. The research is not clear on how the cases will be used in the context of socio-technical transitions until the results section where it is clear that the cases focus on teaching and building knowledge on three paradigms. 

 

Main concerns:

1) Authors can clarify that the manuscript will focus on one aspect of the socio-technical transition. 

2) Authors need to provide more information on the selection of the three cases, as well as, the decision to focus on the three paradigms (agroecology, permaculture and organic).

3) There is no discussion or any form of assessment on the outcome of the three study-cases. For instance, did the 20 educators formed by the Agro-Perma-Lab disseminate their knowledge?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

This is a well written and well-conceived article.

The key problem is related to the use of the socio-technical transitions framework, as I don’t see how this framework was used as the backbone of your research. The framework is well known and there is no need to add any theoretical details. However:

• Introduction: the logical link between the rationale behind the research and the use of the model to address the problem stated at the beginning of the paper and the research question is missing;
• Theoretical background: the way how the frameworks links to the mentioned theory is unclear, especially paragraph 2.1
• Methods: the way how the framework is applied to data and how results are interpreted based on the framework is not clear
• Results: I have the impression that those results are not based on the socio-technical transitions framework; the same applies to the conclusions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

To me the work presented in the paper suffer from important methodological flaws concerning the planning of the work itself. Therefore, at this stage, the paper cannot be improved. To me, the paper does not provide relevant information up to the standard of an international scientific journal. The author cannot back their conclusion, that is to say that those activities are useful to the participants (actually, we do not even know who is attending such courses), that they can be replicated at national level, and that should be supported by public funding, because the authors cannot provide information about the value and effectiveness of such activities to participants, the environment and the society.   

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors adequately addressed the previous comments.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

I think you did a good job

Congratulations