Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments on Roosevelt resilience paper

This is a useful overview of a topic and terminology that is in vogue but often loosely defined in the burgeoning literature. It is well written and generally clear in exposition.

The following are some comments to consider in the revision.

·      Convince me that this is not old wine in a new bottle. For specific shocks there is vast literature on both “resistance” and “resilience” to use the new terms—for example on mitigation and recovery from price shocks or drought shocks. I suspect that the essence of resilience is the capacity to recover from multiple types and more frequent shocks. The paper should be clearer on the value added of the resilience concept versus the earlier literature.

·      Resistance would appear to be equally important to resilience but gets very little attention in the paper. Building resistance capacity essentially mitigates the need for resilience.

·      The paper says nothing about tradeoffs yet they are intrinsic to these concepts. For example, the authors give much attention to food systems diversity as a way to build resilience. That is fine but at what cost—specialization has well known economic values. There is for example, a large literature on land sparing vs land sharing with respect to conserving biodiversity that relates to a productivity-diversity tradeoff.

·      The paper endorses the “build back better” concept that a resilient system should return to a state that functions at a higher level than before the shock. I think this should be contextual. A system that is already performing well should be considered resilient as long as it returns to at least its prior performance level. 

·      I did not understand the difference between resistance and vulnerability. 

·      Governance is included in Table 1 but little discussed in the text. Good governance would seem to be an essential but hard to achieve element of resilience.

·      Figure 1 seems incomplete. There should be arrows from shocks to “resource and ecosystem stability” and from there to “food systems resistance”. Also from “food availability” to “food systems sustainability”. Neither “food systems” nor “food system improvement” are defined. It would also be useful to define risk given the “risk vs uncertainty” literature.

·      Around 269. The importance of scale in resilience is recognized but then the discussion is only at local scale. Indeed, the issue of scale deserves more attention. A system that not resilient at the local level may well be resilient at higher level such as the national level, for example through insurance or social protection systems.

 

 

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for a careful reading of our manuscript and for thoughtful and useful comments. We have addressed the reviewer’s comments in the following ways, and we think these changes constitute definite improvements to the manuscript.

(1) We now do a better job of articulating the value added by our paper. As suggested by the reviewer, we now mention older literatures on recovery from price shocks and drought. We now also articulate that thinking about resilience as a core theme in agronomy requires some rethinking of concepts and measures, as well as a willingness to think about both specific and general resilience. Further, our work sets up more complex work on coincident risks and resilience tradeoffs. We do a better job of explaining that our major contributions are in the areas of measurement at different scales and the way those measures flow from different conceptualizations. See additions in lines 19-21, 26, 44-48, 51-58, 61-64, 621-637.

(2) We agree with the reviewer that food system resistance is also an important topic. We now explicitly acknowledge the concept’s importance, as well as some areas of overlap and difference vis-à-vis resilience. Further, we suggest additional research here. See lines 259-266.

(3) We now also address tradeoffs explicitly. We introduce the topic briefly (lines 61-64), address it when talking about economic capacities (lines 293-303), and give it more extensive treatment in the Discussion (lines 621-637).

(4) We agree with the reviewer that a “better” system is not always a necessary or even desirable result after a shock or disruption. We now acknowledge this in lines 205-206.

(5) We now clarify the relationship between resistance and vulnerability (see lines 264-265).

(6) We agree with the reviewer that governance is crucial to resilience. We have expanded our discussion of this topic (lines 424-429).

(7) We appreciate the reviewer’s comments about Figure 1. We have not changed the figure itself. We agree with the reviewer that the figure excludes some important connections, but this is intentional. We think the figure is more useful as a model if it retains some degree of simplicity and excludes certain elements of reality. We clarify in lines 210-214.  We also add explanation or definition for certain elements in the figure (lines 241-244) in response to the reviewer’s comment.

(8) In line with the reviewer’s comment, we have expanded our discussion of different levels and their interactions. (Note: the word “scales” has different meanings in the literature, so we mostly now try to avoid it.) See lines 44-47, 626-630.

Reviewer 2 Report

I received with interest the review entitled Resilience in Food Systems: Concepts and Measurement Options in an Expanding Research Agenda because the topic of resilience is a topical one, especially against the backdrop of climate change and the Covid crisis.

The authors have created a special material, which through publication will enrich the specialized literature.

The work is very well structured and the sources of information and documentation referred to are up-to-date.

I recommend the authors to read the article Impact of Covid-19 on farming systems in Europe through the lens of resilience thinking, M.P.M. Meuwissen et al, 2021.

Congratulations!

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for reading our manuscript and appreciate the reviewer’s encouraging comments. As suggested by the reviewer, we have added the Meuwissen et al. (2021) piece. That article usefully led us to Meuwissen et al. (2019), which we have also added.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, 

your work is interesting in this analysis of the existing literature on the concept and definitions of resilience and how resilience can be adapted to the food system.

However, it would be advisable to search for and insert a more current bibliography (the one provided is 90% dated).

I would also suggest that you insert at the end of paragraph 1 of the Introduction what is the main objective of your study and who will it serve for the scientific community.

The objective achieved will then have to be commented in the Conclusions paragraph, which is currently missing in the work.

I would also insert a paragraph relating to the methodology adopted to arrive at your choice.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for reading our manuscript and appreciate the reviewer’s encouraging comments. We have addressed the reviewer's comments in the following ways, and we think these changes constitute definite improvements to the manuscript.

(1) We have added 19 new citations to the manuscript, with 13 of these coming from the 2019-2023 timeframe. The historical overview is an important element of our paper, so older citations are necessary. However, we agree with the reviewer that some newer citations were also necessary. These newer citations strengthen the paper.

(2) As suggested by the reviewer, we now do a better job of introducing our main contribution and the scientific implications. We do this in the Introduction (lines 44-50) and in the Discussion (lines 589-594). We note that this is a Review article, and the manuscript preparation guidelines for the journal do not seem to require a separate Conclusions section for this article type.

(3) As requested by the reviewer, we have added a paragraph on our methods. See lines 75-84. We revisit the topic in the Discussion in lines 591-592.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I am staisfied by the authors responses to commenta