Operationalizing Food System Governance: The Case of Fort Portal Food Change Lab
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Although the topic is current and important, I don't think the type of work proposed is appropriate for the journal, even if it publishes work related to the social sciences. I tried to read the work carefully and outline what the authors proposed and I had a lot of trouble, I had more the feeling of reading a first draft of a report on a nutrition laboratory. Honestly, I would also struggle to make precise observations on such a structured work.
I give just a few examples of how the work is inconsistent in its structure and difficult to read:
It is not at all clear that Sustainable Diets for All was part of a five-year-long strategic partnership between ARTICLE 19, Hivos, IIED and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which ended in 2020. On this page you will find all evaluation documents. I had to search for the information on the internet.
There are several quotations presented in quotation marks, and syntactically disconnected from the text, are they quotations for embellishment? How do they relate to the rest of the paper apart from the content? E.G. lines 280, 308
Line 356 do you assume that the reader understands what the SUN Movement is?
Allow me to offer you some articles on similar topics that have clearly presented the initial research objectives and the results.
Jiren, T. S., Dorresteijn, I., Hanspach, J., Schultner, J., Bergsten, A., Manlosa, A., ... & Fischer, J. (2020). Alternative discourses around the governance of food security: A case study from Ethiopia. Global Food Security, 24, 100338.
Little, J., Ilbery, B., Watts, D., Gilg, A., & Simpson, S. (2012). Regionalization and the rescaling of agro-food governance: Case study evidence from two English regions. Political Geography, 31(2), 83-93.
My advice to the authors is not to throw away the work done but to work on it much more to arrive at a publishable result, perhaps even taking a cue from the two linked papers.
Author Response
Please find our response in the attached document.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
1- Line 40: Add a summary description of the work by Termeer et al.
2- Line 50: In the section, “countries’ development”, add examples of countries.
3- Lines 55 and 56: In the section “...from various factors including environmental (drought), political (protests) or measures to prevent disease spread (covid, Ebola)”. Other events such as floods, public policies, etc. do not exist in the city in focus?
4- Lines 58 to 60: In the section, “In few places...”, add examples of countries that have or even data showing the n and % of countries.
5- Line 60: In the section, “...a small number of corporations driving the agenda.”, same recommendation as in the previous paragraphs.
6- Line 65 and 66: Add a reference that supports this statement.
7- Lines 76 and 77: Add a reference that supports this statement.
8- Line 88: Add the adopted governance concept to the respective reference.
9- Line 97: Implemented or Implemented?
10- Lines 96 to 104: Add reference.
11- Line 103: In the excerpt, “The project sought to place citizen agency and food systems”, add to the text the definition of place Citizen agency.
12- Line 105: Implemented or Implemented?
13- Lines 111 to 113: Review confusing and/or incomplete text.
14- Part of item 1.2 “Introduction to the case study” should be moved to the method.
15- Did all institutions play the same role (Food Rights Alliance, Kabarole Research and Resource Centre, Slow Food Uganda and Volunteer Efforts for Development Concerns)? Were the instruments and strategies by consensus? Did everyone get the funding equally?
16- Line 120: In the excerpt, “This paper draws on literature from the Project”, which project are the authors referring to? Should the project be briefly described (what, where with how many, with what tools, main results and/or objectives and in what period)?
17- Lines 123 to 137: Review paragraph. Separate the method by “summary description of the city, summary description of the object, the instruments and/or variables used (add information about the validation of the method or instruments used, who carried out the external evaluations), how the data were treated (content analysis ? With what tools),
18- Lines 123 to 137: As there is no description of the project, there is no way to understand what is written in the paragraph.
19- Lines 133 and 134: The “Otter.ai.” it is a registered trademark? Add the appropriate symbol and the summary description of how such data were treated and analyzed.
20- Lines 129 to 132: Since there is no description of the project, there is no way to understand what is written in the paragraph (The data was complemented by meetings between the researcher and the Food Lab which took place in Fort Portal in August, 2022.).
21- Lines 133 to 137: Since there is no description of the project, there is no way to understand what is written in the paragraph (The data was comple- 133 mented by meetings between the researcher and the Food Lab which took place in Fort 134 Portal in August, 2022. These meeting took place as part of a learning journey between the Food Lab and the West Nile Innovation Hub, a newly created MSP which seeks to support 136 food systems transformations in the West Nile Region of Uganda.).
22- Lines 139 to 135: As there is no description of the project, there is no way to understand what is written in the method. In addition, the entire structure and wording of the text compromises the reading of the results.
23-The text lacks several theoretical definitions and the writing of the theoretical framework in the introduction of the text.
Author Response
Please find a response to your review attached.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear respected editor
I would like to submit my review about the above manuscript. The manuscript describes the effect of rules and legally empowered centres in a city on the food system and eventually the health of humans. It is a very important issue, especially in the region of the authors' study area. I think it is better for this manuscript to visualize the outputs and exit the qualification with explanations. It is highly suggested to the authors have at least one or two graphs to show the capacities both for the lab and framework. My comments are as bellow:
1- The English should be improved and revised
2-The introduction should concentrate on previous studies and comparisons
3- The results should visualize by some graphs
4- The conclusion is better justified by results by calculating some important variables and coefficients
Kind Regards
Author Response
Please find the response attached as a word document.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Please refer to my comments (attached file)
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please find out response in the attached document.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I'm sorry, but following the logical thread of the paper and the following reasoning is really difficult. It could be my limit, I'm not a social scientist, but when I worked with sociologists and anthropologists I didn't find any particular difficulties. I think the paper should be more focused and the information more structured. It is clear that we want to insist on the holistic dimension of the food production governance systems and on the MSPs, however the structure of these entities is not clear and is not schematized, the processes dealt with and the relationships are intuitive but we get lost in the plot of themes, objectives, goals etc...
The theme could be interesting and in line with the aims of the journal but the work must be substantially reformulated to be made accessible to other disciplines as well.
This is my opinion, I leave the choice in the editor's hands.
To understand what I mean, I'll relink two works suggested in the first review.
Jiren, T. S., Dorresteijn, I., Hanspach, J., Schultner, J., Bergsten, A., Manlosa, A., ... & Fischer, J. (2020). Alternative discourses around the governance of food security: A case study from Ethiopia. Global Food Security, 24, 100338.
Little, J., Ilbery, B., Watts, D., Gilg, A., & Simpson, S. (2012). Regionalization and the rescaling of agro-food governance: Case study evidence from two English regions. Political Geography, 31(2), 83-93.
Reviewer 2 Report
9- Line 97 and 105: Implemented or Implemented?
Deploy means to start something, and implement means to put that thing into practice. For example, for a law to be implemented, it must first be implemented, that is, promulgated, sanctioned, and only then executed (implemented).
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Editor
The authors modified the manuscript based on my comments, I have no further comments at the moment. My suggestion is Acceptance.
