The Impact of Rural Households’ Part-Time Farming on Grain Output: Promotion or Inhibition?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
This article is well written on (The Impact of Rural Households' Part-time Farming on Grain 2 Output: Promotion or Inhibition?), however here are a few suggestions that will improve the quality of the manuscript if followed by the authors.
1. The abstract is fine but needs to be more concentrated on the aim and technique phrases. The conclusion is well written.
2. Keywords should be written in alphabetical order.
3. Keep the beginning with recent supported findings. If you can find a related intro of the main title published in 2022, that would be preferable.
4. On Page 1, 34 row, the 'FAO’ word should be written in full form.
5. The methodology used for the bibliographic search and the criteria for the selection of the articles should appear at the end of the introduction
6. This article has too few references cited, and the evidence basis is seriously insufficient. It is necessary to supplement the references and cited viewpoints to enrich the content of the article.
7. In conclusion, “The government should guide the issue of farmers' part-time farming” How can government help farmers? Mention here
8. Your findings have any implications or suggestions for future researchers?
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
I would like to thank the editor for giving me the opportunity to review this paper, "The Impact of Rural Households' Part-time Farming on Grain Output: Promotion or Inhibition?". After reading through the paper, I believe it is a good fit to be published. However, there are a few minor comments that I would like to make.
First, the theoretical contribution in the discussion or conclusion does not appear especially when you found that "it discovered that rural households' part-time farming is positively related to grain output and will increase grain output". What is the theoretical contribution here? Second, I suggest you add a part about the managerial implications of your results in the conclusion part. This will help readers understand how they can apply your findings in their own work and research.
Moreover, this part “this increase is likely attributable to the farmers' 505 investment of their off-farm part-time income in agricultural technology, which in turn 506 affected grain output. The effect on average age of the laborers (AL) during the three years 507 was significant and increasingly positive. But as shown in Table 7, the coefficient was the 508 smallest in the first year, and except for the natural ageing aspect, the phenomenon of 509 youth labor shifting from agriculture to non-agricultural fields due to part-time farming 510 persisted in the short term, leading to a lower quality of labor and ultimately affected 511 grain output.”
This part of the analysis is well-reasoned, but it could be improved by providing more evidence to support the conclusion that the farmers' investment in agricultural technology had a significant effect on grain output. Additionally, more information about the phenomenon of youth labor shifting from agriculture to non-agricultural fields could be included to provide further insight into how this shift affects grain output.
Overall, this paper provides an interesting insight into rural households' part-time farming and its impact on grain output. With these minor comments addressed, I believe it is ready for publication.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Structurally, most of the Introduction should be moved into the Discussion.
Not clear if the data were collected annually between 2009 and 2015. Not clear why 2012 was chosen (not explained what is/was the ‘employment subsidy’ – L212). Since one of the principal conclusions involves a change in effect over time it is important to be precise about the data sources.
Again, in relation to changes over time (differences between years) there doesn’t appear to be any account taken of environmental variability in yields (rainfall amounts and distribution, etc). Did PSM match farms geographically to at least partially account for this? More generally, there is no detail of how the CRFOPD dataset was generated.
Figure 1 serves no real purpose and could be omitted.
The paper is written entirely from the viewpoint of the state and doesn’t consider what alternative goals of rural households might be other than just maximizing grain production. Table 1 shows that mean land per household was only 0.39 ha (a median value would have been useful here, as would values for land per capita. Also, did any of the variables in Tables 1 and 2 change over years?). These are very small farms and there is much evidence that, even with modern technology, such farms aren’t really viable in income or livelihood terms – one of the main reasons why part-time farming is so prevalent. While grain output is of primary importance for the state it might not be the most important issue from the point of view of a diversified rural household.
The conclusions of the study are fundamentally relatively simple, but the descriptions of the methods used, and the results are far more complicated than they need to be. The paper is too long – perhaps much of the detail could go into Supplementary Materials and the remaining arguments made more concisely and with more clarity. It would also be interesting to the general reader if the authors could speculate on the mechanisms and processes that may have brought about what are essentially counter-intuitive findings.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
Authors have revised the article in good manners now it can be accepted.
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
I believe that the manuscript is now suitable for publication.
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
1. Title of manuscript is very simple. Revise it.
2. In abstract section, revise this sentence. ‘On the whole, agricultural labor input and agricultural technology input impacted the rural households' part-time farming income, which was positively related to grain output’.
3. Please rephrase the lines 47 to 48 ‘Farmers now engage in agricultural and off-farm production as the income from 47 agricultural production alone is progressively insufficient to cover their necessities’
4. Rephrase the lines from 55 to 57.
5. In all Tables, add expanded form of all abbreviations beneath the tables.
6. Similarly, there are a lot of grammatical mistakes. Please carefully read the whole article to improve the quality of article.
7. Author should give rationale of the study in the end of introduction along with proper reasoning of this study.
8. Please add comprehensive methods so that reader can understand the methodology properly.
9. Statistical analysis is not clear, please mention which design has been used.
10. Add more practical applications in conclusion section.
11. Check the references style in the bibliography and uniform.
12. Check spelling errors and correct them accordingly.
13. Discussion section should be improved.
14. Add discussion section before conclusion.
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper analyses the impact of part-time farming (PT) on grain output through a panel sample of Chinese farms, using a Propensity Score Matching technique to isolate the effect of PT. The issue is important and also relevant from a policy perspective.
Nevertheless, I have major concerns about the paper.
1) The paper lacks any theoretical or conceptual reference as to the economic mechanisms that could underlay the investigated phenomena. There is no reference to the very large literature in farm household models and related off-farm participation (Huffmann (1980); Singh et al, 1986; and all the large following literature). As a result, there is no clarity on how the variables interact. For instance, H2 (“H2: The higher the rural households' part-time farming income, the more grain out-180 put will be promoted”) does not consider the possibility of a reverse causality, whereby a larger output also determines more PT. If the idea is that PT initially induces a decrease in farm labour, followed by an increase in other inputs, this is not adequately discussed and, more importantly, modelled and tested statistically in a dynamic model. Also, taking agricultural net income as a determinant of grain output (row 288) makes no sense, since grain output clearly determines agricultural net income (moreover, agricultural net income is most probably correlated to land)
2) In general, there is a lack of clarity on the variables and on the meaning of the statistical elaborations:
- It is unclear if the panel is balanced.
- In equation 3), first row, what does Yi represent: the mean of Yi across years for the same farm or is it actually Yit? (the same for the explanatory variables).
- It is therefore unclear if the regression of Table 4 is an OLS on the pooled sample or if the panel nature of the sample is considered: did you try a fixed effect or a random effect model?
- Has the propensity score matching been run on the 2012 year, or on the 2009?
- In section 4.4 what are the instrumented variables? Why do you instrument?
- One simply cannot understand what the paper is trying to do in sections 4.5 and 4.6: For instance, in Table 10 what is the dependent variable? And what the “Variable” column indicate?
- An H5 hypothesis is mentioned at row 259 that is never mentioned elsewhere.
- Rows 431-36: the fact that the maximum DP is larger than the maximum Agricultural Net income does not prove that off-farm income is larger than the agricultural income. Actually, the mean for the overall sample is lower for the former than for the latter.
- There is no discussion on the results referred to taking total grain output or grain output per person as dependent variable. E.g., while the effect of land resource on the former is obviously positive and is interpreted as the effect of an increase in an input on total product, the effect on the latter should be interpreted in terms of labour productivity.
- It is unclear how the labour input is measured. From one side, there is the number of labourers (only family members; are there no hired workers?), on the other ALI measures hours/day. Why the latter? How does it impact total” grain output? In my view, the relevant variable should be total labour input.
3) The writing is very poor and often careless:
- Rows 273-281: the same concept is repeated three times.
- Equation 3): the third row is the same as the first row.
- Several times (e.g., rows 379,386, 448) what is a dependent variable is termed “explanatory variable”.
- Row 381: “For comparison purposes, Table 3 represented the regression results when other variables were uncontrolled.” This is not done in Table 3.
- In the Tables, “n. of samples“ should be “n. of observations”.
- You should explain set/hm2 for non-Chinese readers.
- You should explain what is the “ratio of urban registration to total registration in a household” for non-Chinese readers.
- The word “withal” (p. 4) is archaic.
- P. 6, 4th row, an e is lacking.
References:
Singh, I., Squire, L. and Strauss, J. (Eds) (1986) Agricultural Household Models: Extensions, Applications, and Policy, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Huffman, W. E. (1980). Farm and off-farm work decisions: The role of human capital. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 14-23.
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper that explores empirically the impact and dynamic effect of rural household’s part-time farming on grain output, using data from rural Chinese households. The paper however suffers from a lack of sufficient analysis and discussion of policy or other implications related to the findings, and a less-than-clear methodological approach. As such, in the current form, the paper is not a good fit for the journal in this reviewer's opinion. It is recommended that this paper not be published until major revision is completed, addressing the mentioned paper limitations. Specific comments:
1. Many grammar errors are detected in the text. A complete proof reading by a native English speaker should be conducted to improve both language and organization quality.
2. Lines 40-42. Need references to support this important argument. See:
Agricultural chemical oxygen demand mitigation under various policies in China: a scenario analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 2020, 250, 119513.
The cost-effectiveness of agricultural greenhouse gas reduction under diverse carbon policies in China. China Agricultural Economic Review, 2022, 14(4), 758-773
3. Lines 65-66. The recent research content also included fertilizer use, which should be included in the review. See:
Rural women and chemical fertiliser use in rural China. Journal of Cleaner Production, 2022, 344, 130959.
Does Internet use reduce chemical fertilizer use? Evidence from rural households in China. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 2021, 28(5), 6005-6017.
4. The introduction is quite lengthy and difficult to follow and could use revision. For example, the aims of the paper are not introduced until line 129. Please consider a more succinct introductory section with clear aims. Much of the content of the introduction would be better suited in background review section.
5. References for the use of the China Rural Fixed Observation Point Data? See:
Rural women and chemical fertiliser use in rural China. Journal of Cleaner Production, 2022, 344, 130959.
Does Internet use reduce chemical fertilizer use? Evidence from rural households in China. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 2021, 28(5), 6005-6017.
6. Lines 222-225. Need briefly introduce and references for the PSM and DID approaches used. See:
How does anti-corruption affect enterprise green innovation in China’s energy-intensive industries?. Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 2022, 44(9), 2919-2942.
The effectiveness and heterogeneity of carbon emissions trading scheme in China. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 2021, 28(14), 17306-17318.
Urban carbon emission intensity under emission trading system in a developing economy: evidence from 273 Chinese cities. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 2021, 28(5), 5168-5179.
7. Models (1) and (2). Have spatial effects been considered in the methodology? It is not clear if they have been considered in how the data is treated in the regression. This is an important consideration that has bearing on the validity of the regression results should there be underlying spatial effects.
8. Model (3). Motivation for the use of the mediating model is unclear and needs further explanation. Also need references for the mediating model used. See:
Does financial inclusion improve energy efficiency?. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2023, 186, 122110.
Urban carbon emission intensity under emission trading system in a developing economy: evidence from 273 Chinese cities. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 2021, 28(5), 5168-5179.
9. Lines 320-322. The authors need to address and explain the reasons and the process for the IV identification and selection clearly, not just a simple sentence.
10. There is a lack of meaningful discussion of the results in terms of implications for the estimated results. Without this, it is difficult to determine the true contribution of this work, and the appropriateness of this work for publication through the journal.
11. More robustness analyses should be included. See the following reference as an example:
The impact of financial deepening on carbon reductions in China: Evidence from city-and enterprise-level data. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022, 19(18), 11355.
