Pesticide Use under Public Good Agricultural Practices Standard: A Comparative Study in Thailand

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,
The paper presents an important theme. However, the quality of the paper can be improved. Hopefully the comments below can help the authors to improve the manuscript.

The data was collected in 2016 and now dynamics would have been changed and how this data can be justified and contribute in the literature. Moreover, this is a regional study and how author will generalize these results for the rest of the community.

Conclusion

This section can be improved by modifying conclusion with respect to the motivations for this study also adding some recommendations on the basis of regions.

The flow of English in the manuscript and readability is not up to mark and need changes and lot of improvements. 

Author Response

The authors are sincerely grateful to your kind comments. Please check the attached response documents, thank you very much. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper illustrates the results of a survey on the implementation of Good Agricultural Practices certification in two Thainland’s provinces. The survey was focused on the motives, benefits and reasons associated with the participation or non participation in Q-GAP, training experience, and pesticide use. In a first step the authors analysed the relationship between the variables by means of ANOVA (continuous variables) and chi-square tests (nominal variables). In a second step, they carried out a regression analysis where the dependent variables were the applied amounts of pesticides and herbicides. The work is an empirical analysis and research questions are not very clear. Moreover, the regression analysis is not fully explained and the presentation of results must be improved.  

 

Major revison

1. Rows 93-97. The authors write: “the following questions arise: how strict and satisfactory is the level of Q-GAP compliance required by the enforcing agency and actually achieved by the growers? Should the level of farmer participation be sacrificed by raising the required degree of compliance and enforcement? Is the current level of the standard appropriate to maintain a large social participation?“ These questions are very relevant but the authors do not treat them in the work. Why did they introduce them if they do not furtherly develop this topic?
2. In paragraph 2.2 authors should list the variables used in the regression model.
3. In Table 1 the “F–R p” result is not clear; it is not clear which variables have been tested.
4. In Table 2, TC is not clear. Is TC the total number of certified farmers? If this is the case it does not correspond to the number presented in Table 1 and in Row 226-227. If more than one answer was possible, the TC seems too low with respect to interviewed farmers and considering aggregate percentages could be misleading.
5. In Table 2 the p-value is referred only to “Promised higher productivity”? Table should better include the chi2 statistic for each variable
6. Table 3 and Table 4: same comments of Table 2
7. Results: Paragraph 3.9. Factors affecting the quantity of pesticide use. The presentation of results in Table 11 raises some questions about how regression has been carried out. Did the authors carried out 2 different regressions (1 for certified and 1 for uncertified farms) including 48 (or 50 according to the region) observations with 21 variables for each type of applied pest control? If that is the case, the number of variables to be included in the regression should consider the number of observations.
8. Results: Paragraph 3.9. Factors affecting the quantity of pesticide use. The certification could be considered as a dummy (certified =1; uncertified =0) instead of considering two different regressions
9. Regressions results should include the value of Rsquare
10. Conclusions should be aggregated in the discussion paragraph

 

Minor revision

In Table 1 the last variable “Annual durian sales” should be “Annual durian sales per hectare”

Row 390-391: Verify: “The uncertified farmers in NST, with six of them joining a 15-days program, had significantly more days for pesticide use training than their uncertified counterparts (p < 0.10).”

Author Response

The authors are sincerely grateful to your kind comments. Please check the attached response documents, thank you very much. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Surveys are relatively easy to carry out, but there is always the problem of the credibility of the answers given by the respondents. It seems that those planning the survey were aware of this, which results from a solid description of how the research was carried out in the material and methods chapter.
Therefore, in general, I believe that the work is suitable for printing, although it seems that the scope of questions should be, at least in some elements, slightly different. Unfortunately, there is nothing can be done in this regard.
However, it is possible to omit some analyzes, especially those concerning the assessment depending on gender.  I think that the attempt to include gender in the conducted research somewhat depreciates this questionnaire. Giving up the assessment in terms of gender would certainly affect the readability of Table 11,

Author Response

The authors are sincerely grateful to your kind comments. Please check the attached response documents, thank you very much. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

No comments

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kind review. We will proceed to have the manuscript proofed by an external service once the paper is accepted. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors answered to main comments to the previous version, but results presentation could still be improved. In particular, as regression is concerned I still suggest to provide only the reduced models that could better highlight the findings of the work. I also suggest a language revision. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kind review of the manuscript again. Regarding the choice of the regression method, we would like to leave it to the academic editor's decision. Following the academic editor's advice, we will proceed to have the manuscript proofed by an external service once the paper is accepted for publication (s/he had recommended the manuscript be proofed after it is accepted for publication, not before). Again, we are very thankful to the reviewer for your detailed review.