Climate, Environment and Socio-Economic Drivers of Global Agricultural Productivity Growth

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The issues addressed in the article are currently very topical. The study provides a relatively good theoretical evaluation of the professional literature. The article was created using several mathematical-statistical methods, which contributes to increasing its quality and interpretations of the observed problems. The authors did a good job, as evidenced by partial analyses, discussion and formulated conclusions. The goal that the authors set themselves was sufficiently fulfilled.

However, there are issues that need to be addressed before the article can be published:

Line 29-37: these are instructions for writing an article - they do not belong in the text of the article.

In Chapter 2. Methodology: different line spacing of the text is used.

Citations in the text of the article and references are not processed according to the recommended guidelines for publication.

Author Response

Reviewer#1:

Comment: The issues addressed in the article are currently very topical. The study provides a relatively good theoretical evaluation of the professional literature. The article was created using several mathematical-statistical methods, which contributes to increasing its quality and interpretations of the observed problems. The authors did a good job, as evidenced by partial analyses, discussion and formulated conclusions. The goal that the authors set themselves was sufficiently fulfilled.

Response: We thank the reviewer for the encouraging comments about relevance of the topic, methodological strength and relevance of interpretations and conclusions.

Comment: However, there are issues that need to be addressed before the article can be published:

Line 29-37: these are instructions for writing an article - they do not belong in the text of the article.

Response: We are extremely sorry for this silly error. We now have deleted the para.

 

Comment: In Chapter 2. Methodology: different line spacing of the text is used.

Response: We have adjusted spacing in the text and table also.

Comment: Citations in the text of the article and references are not processed according to the recommended guidelines for publication.

Response: We have adjusted citations as per guidelines of the journal.

Reviewer 2 Report

Global agricultural productivity

 

This is an interesting paper written by authors with an established publication record in this field. The conclusions contain several key points which are worthy of publication.

 

However, I believe that the paper (or maybe the next step in the author’s research) could be much improved as follows:

 

• There are no mentions of any country as an example and this is a big problem as policies in each country are surely more important than the generic classification of countries employed in the paper.
• Agricultural policies are also not necessarily country specific. For example, The European Union.
• Agricultural trade is a key component of agriculture, but this barely mentioned.
• In the same vein the concept of Comparative Advantage is nor mentioned at all. For example one region specialising in its most appropriate crop and trading with another with an alternative crop suited to that region. For example it is not really sensible to grow out of season baby sweet corn in Kenya for European markets, while growing coffee is. Do Europeans really need baby sweet corn in the winter?
• The increases in productivity and differences do not seem that significant

 

Minor points:

 

1. The first paragraph is taken from publications advice REMOVE
2. Lots of typos and stilted English
3. Ragbag of literature but does this matter as most readers will be familiar with literature. Nonetheless refocus on what is missing and what is needed (by this study?)
4. I cannot comment on the Algebra et

Author Response

Reviewer#2

Comment: This is an interesting paper written by authors with an established publication record in this field. The conclusions contain several key points which are worthy of publication.

Response:  We are delighted to learn that the reviewer has found our paper interesting and the suggested policies to be relevant.

Comment: However, I believe that the paper (or maybe the next step in the author’s research) could be much improved as follows:

• There are no mentions of any country as an example and this is a big problem as policies in each country are surely more important than the generic classification of countries employed in the paper.

Response: We have mention some country specific policies in the result section (line 103) and conclusion section (line 651-656). Please refer to the lines#100.

In several other instances, some country specific examples are mentioned.

• Comment: Agricultural policies are also not necessarily country specific. For example, The European Union.

Response: We discuss TFP related policies from both country and regional perspective using the research findings of Fuglie (2013), Anderson (2009), DeBoe (2020) and Yamauchi (2021). It can be found in the manuscript as follows: ‘Conventionally, agricultural policies, whether designed at the regional or country level, are targeted attaining higher productivity so that enough food is produced [26]. Most Asian countries followed the Asian path of productivity growth, where land productivity increased faster than labor productivity in the early period followed by fairly rapid growth of labor productivity, even after the mid-1980s [27]. On the contrary, the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union focused on mechanization of agriculture to boost labor productivity, as labor supply were relatively scarce in these economies. Japan followed the European path (i.e., increasing labor productivity) which is closely related to an increase in farm size and mechanization. Although policies of different regions were different, the goal was to increase total agricultural productivity. There are examples of support policies such as innovation policies related to agriculture, captured in the OECD’s classification as part of the General Services Support Estimate (GSSE), and other policies (environmental regulations or taxes), which may also influence producers’ decision-making and ultimately influence productivity and sustainability outcomes in agriculture [28]. African farmers faced discriminatory agricultural policies than other parts of the world [29]. Nevertheless, different agricultural policies in Sub-Saharan Africa, e.g., national and international agricultural research investment policies, economic policy reforms, and irrigation investments had a positive and significant effect on total factor productivity [30].’ 

• Comment: Agricultural trade is a key component of agriculture, but this barely mentioned.
• In the same vein the concept of Comparative Advantage is nor mentioned at all. For example one region specialising in its most appropriate crop and trading with another with an alternative crop suited to that region. For example it is not really sensible to grow out of season baby sweet corn in Kenya for European markets, while growing coffee is. Do Europeans really need baby sweet corn in the winter?

Response: We definitely agree with the reviewer. Unfortunately we could not address this dimension since trade data across countries are not available for longer period of time. Particularly for some countries no data were available. Hence missing data was an issue which was making analysis difficult and unreliable. But, at the end of introduction we mention this as an area for future research citing the works of (1998), David et al. (2013), He et al. (2016), Bouet et al. (2019) and Pawlak (2017).

This can be found in the manuscript as ‘Another crucial research area is related to the role of agricultural trade in TFP growth. Trade can enable a country to explore market beyond own geography and gain through comparative advantage originated from several factors including natural and bio-physical factor and institutional culture and skills that farmers possess over time. Edwards [49] noted that countries having greater trade barriers experienced slower productivity growth. Farmers of a middle-income country producing traditional and non-traditional crops and producing only traditional crops are facing different international trade effect on crop yields [50]. They also figured out that exporting channels include international technology and knowledge spillovers because of trade and also gains in productivity due to product specialization in trade. In the global market exports, the EU countries held comparative advantages in exporting products of animal origin whereas US revealed comparative advantages in the exports of cereals, preparations of cereals, oilseeds, oleaginous fruits and meat products [51]. Future studies focusing on the linkages between international trade, comparative advantage of individual country and TFP growth in agriculture could unpack new insights and knowledge on the subject matter.’

• Comment: The increases in productivity and differences do not seem that significant

Response: We have conducted one-way ANOVA for exploring whether the estimated geometric mean of agricultural TFP across regions and different categories are significantly different. The test results indicates significant differences exist and is reported at the bottom of Table 3 and also mentioned in the text.

 

Minor points:

1. The first paragraph is taken from publications advice REMOVE

Response: We have removed the paragraph.

2. Lots of typos and stilted English

Response: We have tried to identify typos and adjusted those, particularly the mix-up between Britis and US spelling.

3. Ragbag of literature but does this matter as most readers will be familiar with literature. Nonetheless refocus on what is missing and what is needed (by this study?)

Response: We have provided shortcomings of the existing literature and explained the gaps in the literature in lines# 129–145.

4. I cannot comment on the Algebra et

Response: We confirm that there is no error in equations.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors present an interesting study about the identification of sources of growth in global agriculture total factor productivity (TFP) and the use of it for a future prediction of agricultural productivity. Factors such as climate variability coulbe key to explain the productivity increase or reduction. The authors conclude with interesting recommendations for policy makers.

The study is mature, is well deigned and the results match the proposed objectives. English is fine.

Under my humble opinion the manuscript is ready to be published in land journal. The authors only have to adapt the ms to MDPI journal guidelines (i.e. references in the text).

Also check the table 1; there are some mistaike with the line spacing.

Congratulations for the research.

Author Response

Reviewer#3

Comment: line 29-36 „The introduction should … details on references.” – I am not sure that the instruction should be a part of the paper

 Response: We have deleted the para.

Comment: line 278-280: increase in the adult literacy rate increases reduce the technical efficiency - why?

 Response: We tried to explain this in the mentioned place using the following text – ‘Contrary to the common notion of efficiency enhancing role of education, in many instances empirical literature was inconclusive about the relationship between the two, while some noted negative relationship [57, 58]. A commonly mentioned reason is the wider livelihood domain beyond agriculture which are more likely to be explored by the educated farmers.’

Comment: line 298-300 – why annual mean temperature (LTT) and annual total rainfall (LTP) cause reduction of efficiency?

 Response: With the help of new literature (Rahman and Anik, 2020 and Amin et al. 2015) we tried explain the reasons in the para. The newly added text can be found as “which is in-line with Rahman and Anik’s [59] findings about Bangladesh agriculture. Moreover, climatic vulnerability in the form of increasing LTP and LTT create risk and uncertainty which can negatively contribute to efficiency.’

And ‘Increasing precipitation within the growing season may cause crop loss, particularly in tropical and sub-tropical countries which are prone to flood. Withing a certain temperature range, crop growth is positively and linearly related with temperature. But beyond the base and the upper threshold temperature, the growth is affected, and the relationship is inverse for temperature between optimum and a ceiling level [60]. Increasing temperature in the growing season have adverse effect on yield [61].’

Comment: line 424  - in general, for several reasons, employment in agriculture is showing a downward trend globally –is it possible to indicate at least a few reasons (even in brackets; without in-depth analysis or references to in-depth studies of literature)

 Response: We have tried to specify some reasons as follows ‘including increasing use of agricultural technology and mechanization that lead to increased labor productivity and the growth in the non-farm sector creating more lucrative job opportunities beyond the farm sector’

Comment: line 435-437 - there were many more factors, such as the concentration of production and specialization

 Response: We thank the reviewer for pointing this which we missed. We have added some factors through the text ‘There were many more factors including natural resource that led to concentration of production and specialization. For instance, the land-rich and resourceful Central Asian countries specialized in grain and cotton production [82] and African countries concentrated on traditional agricultural products (e.g. cocoa, coffee, cotton, fish and fish products, fruits, legumes, and tea, etc.) [83].’

Comment: Most of the conclusions focus on policy implications (governmental or non-governmental - line 467). But the main role should be played by microeconomic optimization at the farm level. What are the conclusions of the research for farm managers?

 Response: Since we dealt with country level data, the suggested policies are mostly at national level. Adopting these will contribute at the farm level productivity. However, we cannot ignore the importance of farms since they will be the ultimate change maker. We tried to offer some guidelines for the farms. These can be found at the end of the paper through these texts ‘Furthermore, individual farmers and/or farm managers in respective countries also have an important role to play by following economic optimization of their production process by adopting appropriate/modern technologies and improving technical, scale and mix-efficiencies while acknowledging the limitations posed by climate change and the natural production environment within which they are operating.’

Reviewer 4 Report

line 29-36 „The introduction should … details on references.” – I am not sure that the instruction should be a part of the paper

line 278-280: increase in the adult literacy rate increases reduce the technical efficiency - why?

line 298-300 – why annual mean temperature (LTT) and annual total rainfall (LTP) cause reduction of efficiency?

line 424  - in general, for several reasons, employment in agriculture is showing a downward trend globally –is it possible to indicate at least a few reasons (even in brackets; without in-depth analysis or references to in-depth studies of literature)

line 435-437 - there were many more factors, such as the concentration of production and specialization

Most of the conclusions focus on policy implications (governmental or non-governmental - line 467). But the main role should be played by microeconomic optimization at the farm level. What are the conclusions of the research for farm managers?

Author Response

Reviewer#3

line 29-36 „The introduction should … details on references.” – I am not sure that the instruction should be a part of the paper

Response: We have deleted the para.

line 278-280: increase in the adult literacy rate increases reduce the technical efficiency - why?

Response: We tried to explain this in the mentioned place using the following text – ‘Contrary to the common notion of efficiency enhancing role of education, in many instances empirical literature was inconclusive about the relationship between the two, while some noted negative relationship [57, 58]. A commonly mentioned reason is the wider livelihood domain beyond agriculture which are more likely to be explored by the educated farmers.’

Comment: line 298-300 – why annual mean temperature (LTT) and annual total rainfall (LTP) cause reduction of efficiency?

Response: With the help of new literature (Rahman and Anik, 2020 and Amin et al. 2015) we tried explain the reasons in the para. The newly added text can be found as “which is in-line with Rahman and Anik’s [59] findings about Bangladesh agriculture. Moreover, climatic vulnerability in the form of increasing LTP and LTT create risk and uncertainty which can negatively contribute to efficiency.’

And ‘Increasing precipitation within the growing season may cause crop loss, particularly in tropical and sub-tropical countries which are prone to flood. Withing a certain temperature range, crop growth is positively and linearly related with temperature. But beyond the base and the upper threshold temperature, the growth is affected, and the relationship is inverse for temperature between optimum and a ceiling level [60]. Increasing temperature in the growing season have adverse effect on yield [61].’

Comment: line 424  - in general, for several reasons, employment in agriculture is showing a downward trend globally –is it possible to indicate at least a few reasons (even in brackets; without in-depth analysis or references to in-depth studies of literature)

Response: We have tried to specify some reasons as follows ‘including increasing use of agricultural technology and mechanization that lead to increased labor productivity and the growth in the non-farm sector creating more lucrative job opportunities beyond the farm sector’

Comment: line 435-437 - there were many more factors, such as the concentration of production and specialization

Response: We thank the reviewer for pointing this which we missed. We have added some factors through the text ‘There were many more factors including natural resource that led to concentration of production and specialization. For instance, the land-rich and resourceful Central Asian countries specialized in grain and cotton production [82] and African countries concentrated on traditional agricultural products (e.g. cocoa, coffee, cotton, fish and fish products, fruits, legumes, and tea, etc.) [83].’

Comment: Most of the conclusions focus on policy implications (governmental or non-governmental - line 467). But the main role should be played by microeconomic optimization at the farm level. What are the conclusions of the research for farm managers?

Response: Since we dealt with country level data, the suggested policies are mostly at national level. Adopting these will contribute at the farm level productivity. However, we cannot ignore the importance of farms since they will be the ultimate change maker. We tried to offer some guidelines for the farms. These can be found at the end of the paper through these texts ‘Furthermore, individual farmers and/or farm managers in respective countries also have an important role to play by following economic optimization of their production process by adopting appropriate/modern technologies and improving technical, scale and mix-efficiencies while acknowledging the limitations posed by climate change and the natural production environment within which they are operating.’

 

Reviewer 5 Report

Dear Authors, 

I have reviewed your paper and I believe that it makes an important contribution to research on the impact of climate change on factor productivity. It should also be positively valued that your work is based on a panel of data with 104 countries and a time horizon of 45 years. A priori, this is a considerable sample, both in terms of the number of countries and the years analyzed. 

However, there are some aspects of your article that I would like to highlight, as I believe that they could be significantly improved. 

1. Title. I think your title is too long and perhaps you could shorten it, while making it more representative of your work. It is not a vital issue for this reviewer, it is just a suggestion.  
2. Introduction. First of all, I think you should eliminate the first paragraph (lines 29 to 36) as these are instructions of what the introduction section should contain.

On the other hand, I believe that there are several lines of research that refer to agriculture that have not been taken into account. I am referring to waste management, the circular economy and the bioeconomy, within the framework of sustainable development. It is worth noting that all is not lost in the agricultural sector and that the circular economy is gaining more and more importance. There are several works that provide this vision and are widely cited, in addition to the work of Tilman that you have cited: 

• Mirabella, N., Castellani, V., & Sala, S. (2014). Current options for the valorization of food manufacturing waste: A review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 65, 28-41. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.051 (cited 540 times in the Scopus Database).
• Scarlat, N., Dallemand, J. -., Monforti-Ferrario, F., & Nita, V. (2015). The role of biomass and bioenergy in a future bioeconomy: Policies and facts. Environmental Development, 15, 3-34. doi:10.1016/j.envdev.2015.03.006 (cited 452 times in the Scopus Database).

On the other hand, it would be interesting to include a reflection on the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda. Specifically, there are several SDGs that are closely related to your work: SDG-12- Responsible consumption and production, SDG-13-Climate action and SDG-14-Life on land...  

3. Methodology. It is indicated that FAOSTAT records have been used. If this database is consulted, it can be seen that there is already data for the year 2020. Would it not be possible to update your data? Please justify the calculation period: 1969-2013.  Also, in the methodological section you usually justify why you use a certain analysis. In your case, you have decided to use the Tobit model. You are usually more explicit about why you are using a certain model. 

4. Results and discussion. Data have been projected from 2014 to 2033, knowing that we already have data from 2014 to at least 2020. 

Finally, I believe that the authors should make an additional effort to highlight the current findings of their research, especially from the methodological point of view ( temporal horizon). 

Best of luck with your article and I hope you will consider my suggestions.

Regards, 

 

Author Response

Reviewer 5:

Dear Authors,

I have reviewed your paper and I believe that it makes an important contribution to research on the impact of climate change on factor productivity. It should also be positively valued that your work is based on a panel of data with 104 countries and a time horizon of 45 years. A priori, this is a considerable sample, both in terms of the number of countries and the years analyzed.

 

Response: We thank the reviewer for finding the paper interesting and useful.

Comment: However, there are some aspects of your article that I would like to highlight, as I believe that they could be significantly improved.

1. Title. I think your title is too long and perhaps you could shorten it, while making it more representative of your work. It is not a vital issue for this reviewer, it is just a suggestion.

Response: We agree that the title can be shorten. Our proposed new title is – ‘Climate, environment and socio-economic drivers of global agricultural productivity growth’

 

2. Introduction. First of all, I think you should eliminate the first paragraph (lines 29 to 36) as these are instructions of what the introduction section should contain.

Response: The part is deleted.

 

 

Comment: On the other hand, I believe that there are several lines of research that refer to agriculture that have not been taken into account. I am referring to waste management, the circular economy and the bioeconomy, within the framework of sustainable development. It is worth noting that all is not lost in the agricultural sector and that the circular economy is gaining more and more importance.

 

There are several works that provide this vision and are widely cited, in addition to the work of

Tilman that you have cited:

• Mirabella, N., Castellani, V., & Sala, S. (2014). Current options for the valorization of food manufacturing waste: A review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 65, 28-41.

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.051 (cited 540 times in the Scopus Database).

• Scarlat, N., Dallemand, J. -., Monforti-Ferrario, F., & Nita, V. (2015). The role of biomass and bioenergy in a future bioeconomy: Policies and facts. Environmental Development, 15,

3-34. doi:10.1016/j.envdev.2015.03.006 (cited 452 times in the Scopus Database).

Response: We agree with the reviewer and consulted literature suggested. We recognized this as a potential future research area and have added the following text – ‘Though we explored different potential dimensions of agricultural productivity, due to lack of necessary data covering a long time-series for majority of the countries investigated in this study, we could not explore two potential dimensions. The first one is related to waste management in agriculture from the viewpoint of circular economy and the bioeconomy. While agriculture being both cause and effect of climate change, it also contributes to climate change mitigation and resilience since all the inputs from its production process are not lost and the concept of circular economy addresses this. Though several notable related works are available [e.g. 47, 48], more rigorous work in these themes aimed at exploring the linkages and possible policy options are suggested for future research’.

 

Comment: On the other hand, it would be interesting to include a reflection on the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda. Specifically, there are several SDGs that are closely related to your work: SDG-12- Responsible consumption and production, SDG-13-Climate action and SDG-14-Life on land...

Response: We thank the reviewer for mentioning this which certainly increases acceptability of the paper. We have added the following text linking relevant SDGs ‘Increased TFP has implications beyond national boundary and can help in achieving internationally set development targets including the Sustainable Development Goal (SGD). For instance, to attain SDG2 (Zero hunger) there is a target of doubling productivity in smallholder farms by 2030. TFP growth will also help in achieving sustainability related SGD targets, viz. SGD 12 (Responsible consumption and production) targeting strengthen scientific and technological capacities, SDG 13 (Climate action) focusing resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters and SDG 15 (Life on land) which is to ensure conservation, restoration and sustainable use of ecosystems.’

 

 

Comment: 3. Methodology. It is indicated that FAOSTAT records have been used. If this database is consulted, it can be seen that there is already data for the year 2020. Would it not be possible to update your data? Please justify the calculation period: 1969-2013. Also, in the methodological

section you usually justify why you use a certain analysis. In your case, you have decided to use the Tobit model. You are usually more explicit about why you are using a certain model.

 

Response: We agree with the reviewer that adding more years will certainly contribute to the analysis. But there are practical limitations. Prior to 1969, there were many missing data points. Beyond 2013, since most of the data from other databases used in the analysis are not available, and also adding 5 more years of data to the panel, i.e., upto 2018 will not have any major effect on the main conclusions of the study. Data beyond 2018 is not usable because these are plagued by COVID-19 pandemic and considered as not-normal years. To model underlying structural relationships (as we did), data must belong to general normal years as outliers adversely affect estimates.

The related explanation added is as follows ‘We choose this particular time period since prior to 1969, there were many missing data points. Beyond 2013, data for most of the explanatory variables used in the analysis are not available.’

We have mentioned two reasons for using the MVTOBIT model:

• The dependent variable which is censored in nature;
• Since we have multiple TFP indices, while knowing the determinants/drivers, the model enables testing correlations between error terms of different equations, which ultimately informs how countries substitute or compliment between TFP and its efficiency components.

Comment: 4. Results and discussion. Data have been projected from 2014 to 2033, knowing that we already have data from 2014 to at least 2020.

Response: Since data series used is 1969 – 2013, forecasting is valid from 2014 onward. This is because forecasting cannot be started with a gap from the terminal year of the data-series.

Comment: Finally, I believe that the authors should make an additional effort to highlight the current findings of their research, especially from the methodological point of view ( temporal horizon).

Response: We thank the reviewer for pointing this possibility. In conclusion we now mention a methodological improvement of our approach to conventional approach in identifying determinants of TFP change and components. The methodological contribution can be found as follows – ‘The revealed complementary relationships amongst TFP and its three efficiency components which implies over time growth in TFP or any of its component is associated with growth in another component. This insightful finding is a methodological improvement, which is not found in conventional literature exploring determinants of TFP.’

Round 2

Reviewer 5 Report

Dear Authors, 

Thank you for addressing part of my suggestions. Also, I want to believe your explanation about limiting the panel data to 2013 and not going until 2018, at least. However, you indicate to me that incorporating 5 more years (2014 to 2018) does not change the analysis ("...upto 2018 will not have any major effect on the main conclusions of the study..."). Don't you think that giving a more current view is preferable to keeping a panel with data from 2013? I don't agree with that. 

Regards, 

Reviewer.