Assessing Production and Marketing Efficiency of Organic Horticultural Commodities: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Professor,

Thank you very much for your invitation me to review this paper. I think that this topic is interesting. The paper discusses about the production and marketing efficiency of organic horticultural commodities, and using the  stochastic frontier analysis, is well-discussed and considered. The results indicated that organic cabbage cultivation can be more technically and economically efficient by increasing production inputs for organic cabbage farming, and this considers as a good point.

I have some comments for improving this paper as follows:

1/ The abstract misses the data, the period of the study. The results need to be further concluded.

2/ Lack of the novelty, the research objectives, and the main results in the Introduction. I think that this paper needs to be further improved this.

3/ Thus, the general form of the equation of such production functions changes to log Y = log a + b log X that should be performed by text.

4/ The paper is lack of the literature review. The current literature review is like the methodology.

5/ Where is the data collection? The descriptive statistics for the data collection.

6/ The results are weak, and do not confirm the results are robust. You should be check of robustness.

7/ The paper is lack of discussion as well as reaffirm the novelty of the study.

8/ The conclusion is also lack of major information, and should be improved again.

9/ Explaining why you select Stochastic Frontier analysis, and not consider other analyses.

Thank you

A minor revision

Author Response

Dear Professor,

Greetings,

Thank you for giving suggestions for improving our article. We are trying to improve this article so that it is more focused. We attach an explanation of the improvement at the end of the manuscript that we have revised. 

Etty Puji Lestari

Corresponding author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

The subject of food production, namely food security, is of utmost importance. The paper addresses a particular product, cabbages, in an organic form of production and the related challenges envisaging efficiency and management improvements. The paper should be improved in the following aspects:

1. Provide a synthetic territorial context of the region and the country. Where is the Kopeng agropolitan area?

2. Provide some information on cabbage market and, most of all, justify the relevance of the product within the diet of this region/country in particular.

Author Response

Dear Professor,

Greetings,
Thank you for giving suggestions for improving our article. We are trying to improve this article so that it is more focused. We attach an explanation of the improvement at the end of the manuscript that we have revised. 

Etty Puji Lestari
Corresponding author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Sir

Thank you for sending the revised paper. The quality of the paper is much better. However, 

1/ The Figure 1 should add the source as well as to correct the spelling of "Kopeng Agropolitan"

2/ Please do the descriptives of data, it is  good to check the accuracy of the data. For the current results, we cannot check it.

3/ There are two "Figure 1"

4/ Please reduce the similarity index for 7%, and 6%. It is highly like plagiarism

Thank you

A minor revision

Author Response

Dear Reviewer.

Thank you for all your comments and input on improving this article. We have revised the substance according to the reviewer's direction. We have also checked for plagiarism and proofread articles. Please find the detailed responses below and the revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

Best regards,

Etty Puji Lestari (corresponding author)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Professor 

This paper is much better