Technical Efficiency and Economic Analysis of Rice Crop in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, you started a very good job; however I have some recommendations for its improvement:

row 22: Abstract – please do not use the shortcut DAP and FYM without explanation of their meaning before.

row 23-24: Please specify more detailed the sentence in the abstract: „ implies that a 1% increase in these inputs enhances the rice yield by 0.22%, 0.25%, 0.02% 0.03% and 0.01%, respectively.“ When we enhance the rice yields in each mentioned case?

row 56-59: Please rewrite this sentence clearer, maybe try to use figure or table: “China is followed by India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam with the production of 168.50 million tons, 81.38 tons, 48.98 million tons and 42.76 million tons on areas of 43.78 million hectares, 15.78 million hectares, 11.27 million hectares and 7.7 million hectares with an average yield of 3.84, 5.15, 4.34, 5.54 tons per hectare respectively“

row 77: [22] on the begin of sentence. What does it mean?

row 93-94: Please rewrite the sentence more detailed: „the potential for maximum yield is high, however the current low rice production in such areas needs to be investigated for a possible reason.“

row 98-99: Please introduce some citations that it is right: “low yield might be due to some factors like traditional farming practices, poor-technology, lack of farming information and over or under utilization of available resources.”

row 100: Please specify your sentence more detailed: “Whereas, technical efficiency might be one of them.”

row 102: please correct the citation according to the journal requirements: „Hussain (2013) and [29]“

row 108: Objectives of the study do not correspondent with the title.

row 114: In the chapter 1.4 there is missing a reference to Figure 1. Moreover, please unify the title of figure Fig.1 and Figure 2

row 180 and 186: [22] introduced ???

row 212: Please change small “s” for the big one; it means not ?1?????? but ?1??S???

row 220: Please explain the shortcut DAP

row 224: Please explain the shortcut FYM

row 226: How is calculated Ui?

row 235: ?∗? – how was it calculated? What is it?

row 239: “2.3.2 Technical inefficiency’s estimation” According to the formula it seems the parameters of Greek alphabet were calculated not the TE.

row 248. How was the experience of farmers measured?

row 287 and other similar ones: Please explain Rs.19324.73. How much is it in USD or EUR?

row 309: What is the meaning of this chapter? 3.3. Gross and net revenue of rice growers Please write more detailed the connection with other chapters. Moreover, do not please introduce elementary formulas such as (11).

row 280 and 316: Average cost of production of rice per acre and Gross and net revenue acre. Was it possible to interpret the costs and revenues in the same units, it means average cost and average revenues or total cost and total revenues.....

row 338-366: Please rewrite the interpretation of results more detailed.

row 371-373: Please rewrite the interpretation of results more detailed.

row 378-380: Please rewrite the interpretation of results more detailed.

row 400-402: please compare the results more detailed with the cited references.

row 409: Chapter 3.8 should be mentioned in the chapter related to the description of methods

How was the TE by SFA calculated?

Moreover, Discussion is missing. It is mentioned a little bit in the results; however, it will be better to present the results and in the chapter of discussion to compare the results with the other relevant references.

Conclusions: Conclusions should also answer these questions:

• Why is this study unique?
• What are the shortcomings and uncertainties of this study?
• What did we scientific/research community learn out of it?
• Benefits for policymakers?
• Benefits for stakeholders?
• Future work?

Author Response

Authors appreciate comments and suggestions. We have incorporated our responses to each comments in the revised manuscript. Thanks.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

It was a pleasure to read your manuscript. However, some changes/improvements are needed as follows:

Reading the manuscript I realized that its title is not the most appropriate. Its content reflects not only a technical but also an economic analysis. This is also mentioned in the research objectives.

I would recommend that in the introduction the authors show the multifunctional role of agriculture and to cite relevant papers concerning this aspect.

The citation used in the following sentence is not correct. A sentence cannot have a parenthesis as its subject: "[22] Introduced a method for the first time to measure and enlighten the technical 77 efficiency of individuals in a production process."

The presentation of the objectives of the study should not be in this format (it should not be a separate section of the article).

The first part of the article (up to the material and method should be entirely reorganized). The rationale for the research and its importance should not be mentioned in separate sections.
At the end of the introduction, the authors should present the aim and objectives of the research and the way the manuscript is structured. The next section should be devoted to the binding study. This is conspicuously missing from the article. The authors should present the most relevant research in the field of the topic studied. This research should not only refer to Pakistan or Asian countries, but should have an international coverage.

Only after these sections are restructured, can the methodology be continued.

The methodology part also needs to be rewritten. The authors should start with the presentation of the research material (the area under study) and then continue with the methodology. In the case of the method, the research instrument is not clearly presented. Is it a questionnaire? Or an individual interview? What does the questionnaire/interview guide contain?
How and when was the data collection carried out?

An extremely weak point of the article is that the discussion is missing. The results obtained by the authors are not compared with those of other previous studies.

The conclusions are not well written. They should not repeat what has already been presented in the results section, but should show the added value of the study, the practical implications for society, and the limitations of the study.

Author Response

Authors sincerely appreciate reviewers comments and valuable suggestions. It has helped us to improve our paper. We have incorporated our responses in the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper was significantly improved according to reviewers suggestions.

Congratulations for your work!