Quantifying the Impact of COVID-19 Relief Vouchers Schemes on Food Security: Empirical Evidence Insights from South Africa
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
The authors have modified the manuscript based on the recommendations I made to the first version of it. I consider that the manuscript now has the requirements to be published and, for my part, I have no further comments to add.
Author Response
Thank you for your contribution
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
Dear Authors,
I greatly appreciated your efforts to revise the article following my suggestions. Thank you for replying point by point to my comments.
Best regards
Author Response
Thank you for your contribution
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
This is an interesting and meaningful study. The authors use micro survey data, focus on COVID - 19 relief vouchers for food security. Some suggestions for your reference:
(1) The theoretical analysis part needs to be further strengthened. Although the author has put forward a theoretical analysis framework, he has not systematically sorted out the mechanism of action of core independent variables on dependent variables, which needs to be further strengthened, and finally put forward a complete and rigorous research hypothesis.
(2) The research lacks the introduction of the measure of variables. It is suggested to further supplement the systematic introduction of the measures of variables, especially dependent variables and core independent variables. In addition, the selection of control variables should also have corresponding theoretical basis.
(3) The resolution of Figure 2 is not high. It is recommended to increase the resolution.
(4) The conclusions need to be further refined, and it might be better to report some specific data.
(5) The implications of the study suggest further strengthening. This part of the current manuscript is too little ink, so it is suggested to further strengthen and improve.
Author Response
Please find attached
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
I have no other comments, thank you.
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
Reviewer General CommentComment 1:
The authors must revise their manuscript in the light of the most common concepts used: food security (Line 12), food security outcome (Line 21), household food security (Line 22), extreme food insecurity (Line 27), food insecurity vulnerabilities (Line 62), acute food insecurity (Line 85), and the impact of COVID-19 policy interventions (Lines 74-75). It is important to specify how these conceptualizations have guided this research, and how approaches related to these different views were used to test the hypothesis.
Comment 2:
About the methodology, the authors are suggested to use theoretical approach to support the variables included in the Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model. In the same way, the authors must justify the importance of the Districts, in the Northern Cape Province, in term of COVID-19 exposures and sensitives. As the author stated: “clusters for effective analysis of characteristics and outcomes while accounting for heterogeneity” (lines 207-208). In this sense, it could be more convenient to use analysis techniques that explain how much variance is due to Districts and how much to households.
In the respondents selection, authors explain the selection of Large Stock Unit (LSU) beneficiary program, but they don´t explain the sample size selection of non beneficiary.
The equations to estimate the Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model is almost the same in two references revised by the authors.
Comment 3:
The content of the Results and Discussion must be in terms of food insecurity, food security vulnerabilities or in the impact of COVID-19 policy interventions, but not in aid program policies. The conclusion does not summarize the findings; it does not state implications of the results of food security under shocks COVID-19.
Specific comments.
Line 12: ? food security? What kind of food
Line 21: ? food security outcome ?
Line 208: ? accounting for heterogeneity? How
Line 215: ? food consumption patterns?
Lines 217-218: other drivers of food insecurity in the communities?
Line 709: ? Eeffective?
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
your article seems to be a little unbalanced, the methodological part and the discussions are too long compared to the conclusions and the description of the area under analysis should be improved. It seems to me that you focused a lot on the theoretical econometric aspects but the contribution of the effectiveness of the political intervention on the mitigation of the covid effects is not so perfectly defined and the differences between the groups analyzed should be more emphasized.
Please find below some specific suggestions that I hope could help you:
1) it is necessary to review the editing (check spacing, page numbering, position of figures and tables, etc.).
2) the abstract in some passages remembers what is written in the conclusions, it should summarize better.
3) line 106: being a paragraph title, the numbering is missing, maybe it should be 1.1.
4) line 129-130: why use square brackets?
5) line 158 and line 181: for the numbers it would be better to put the comma to indicate the thousands (387,741 and 45,000).
6) Fig. 1: improving the quality, as it is it cannot be readable.
7) paragraph 2.2: it would be useful to better frame the agricultural sector in the Northern Cape Province.
8) Fig. 2: make it more readable and more immediate to understand, for example add % to the present values ​​and then why population? Are we talking about farmers or resident citizens?
9) in the text you mention different methods of data analysis / treatment (eg line 209: Cochran correctional method; line 301: Full information maximum likelihood) without "explaining" them, maybe a brief mention of what they are and what they are used for would be useful to facilitate the reading / understanding of the work done;
10) total LSU scheme value, scheme amount, scheme LSU create confusion, perhaps it is appropriate to diversify the "names" more.
11) line 230: DALRRD what it means? Please put it in full.
12) line 312: the explanation about estimating regression errors should be simplified.
13) It seems that too much space is given to the description of the methodology, but the results are little poor compared to it.
14) line 394 to 406: years, number of family members and years of experience must be expressed as whole numbers
15) you divided the interviewees into 2 groups but apart from a few small differences they look exactly the same thing, maybe you should do some additional tests to better differentiate (or perhaps better justify) the 2 "populations”.
16) Fig. 3 should be eliminated.
17) Tab. 3: in my opinion it is better if you put ATT, ATU, ATE in full
18) you speak at the bottom of the tables of significance but do not show any test of goodness of the analyzes made I suggest adding it.
19) the part of discussion is too long and heavy you should greatly simplify it, focusing exclusively on the object of the work: the support policies for Covid.
20) the conclusions should be better expanded to balance the different parts of the article.
21) glossary ​​reports terms that are not present in the text, please check it.
22) references: there are too many self-citations.
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript “Quantifying the impact of COVID -19 relief vouchers schemes on food security: Empirical Evidence Insights from South Africa” addresses an issue that has unfortunately acquired great interest on a global scale during the last three years. The authors do not limit themselves to their case study but also make continuous references to what happened in similar circumstances in other African contexts. This enriches their research and allows the reader to relate this case study with what happened in other contexts. For all this, we have here a good case study that, as its own authors indicate in line 94 and the following, makes two important contributions:
“First, it adds to the small but growing literature on the impact of the pandemic on household food security in sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa in general, and the Northern Cape Province in particular. Second, the study assesses the efficacy of policy intervention in mitigating these damaging Impacts.”
It is noteworthy and grateful that the authors have prepared an abstract and indicated some key words that reflect very well what the text is about, which is also quite well and clearly written, as well as its reasoning well organized. For this reason, one can advance in its reading with great ease, contrary to what happens in some cumbersome writings in which one is forced to reread the paragraphs several times to try to find out what is being said without always succeeding.
In addition to all this, the bibliographical references are appropriate and the methodology is robust and perfectly suited to the case studied. In any case, I suggest to the authors some small changes that I hope they will take into account and in this way their manuscript can be improved in order to make it even more attractive and convincing.
In the first place, in line 147 and following of the “Materials and Methods” section there are some descriptive paragraphs that I would move from there and place them in the “Introduction” section of the manuscript. These are the following paragraphs:
“The study was conducted in the Northern Cape Province, located in the north-west part of South Africa at coordinates 29.0467° S, 21.8569° E. The province has variable altitude, with the lowest being 0m and the highest at 2156m [16]. In South Africa, the province borders the Western and Eastern Cape provinces in the south and the Free State and North West provinces in the east while also sharing international borders with Namibia and Botswana. Despite the province’s total surface area (361,830 km2) accounting for 30% of the country's total area and thus also being the largest province by surface area, the province has the smallest population representing 2% of the country’s population while also having the lowest population density of 2 persons/km2 [16]. The Northern Cape's administrative government is divided into five districts with 26 local municipalities. The Frances Baard District Municipality is located in the North-eastern region and has 387.741 residents who represent approximately 32.5% of the population, with the highest density. Figure 1 below shows the map of the Northern Cape Province and Frances Baard District Municipality
The study area is a major livestock-producing zone and is vulnerable to food insecurity since it experiences temperatures averaging 18-40°C and average annual rainfall as low as 20 mm on the west to approximately 300 mm on the east. Smallholder farmers mainly produce goats, sheep and cattle for subsistence with intermittent sales during droughts and other shocks. Mining activities are also common in rural municipalities as a safety net against failure in agriculture. Prolonged and persistent droughts are also common, and thus this makes dependence on agricultural livelihoods problematic [18]. Regardless of the aforementioned bottlenecks, agriculture still, directly and indirectly, employs about 45 000 people in the province and therefore accounts for 16% of the total formal employment base and 40.3% of the province's economic activities.”
Second, the “Conclusions” section should be more focused on summarizing the findings reached with this research, as well as suggesting future lines of research on the same subject investigated by the authors. Besides, I would not put in the Conclusions section paragraphs like the one I copy and paste below from line 680 and following of this manuscript, but rather that paragraph should be part of a section of the manuscript titled something like "Recommendations and some limitations of this article”:
“Building on the aforementioned conclusions, it is inevitable to consider multi-faceted intervention that targets cattle losses and encourages market-oriented production systems. A double-edged strategy that directly supports market and marketing strategies in the wake of uncertainties presented by COVID-19 needs to be designed. This should also embrace a range of age groups, including the youths, to span the horizon of the food security benefits associated with well-targeted and adequate LSU interventions. Going forward, a national-scale analysis of the LSU scheme can be conducted to provide the patterns in the heterogeneous contexts of various smallholder farmers. Future research can also use panel data to trace the temporal effects of various COVID-19 phases within the LSU model's framework while expanding to accommodate other core livelihoods supporting interventions in agriculture.”
I hope that my previous comments help the authors to improve a work that, I reiterate, is worthwhile both for the subject it addresses and for the analytical strategy with which it does so.
