Potential Adoption of Integrated Pest Management Strategy for Suppression of Mango Fruit Flies in East Africa: An Ex Ante and Ex Post Analysis in Ethiopia and Kenya
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript is a very nice contribution to the community of IPM workers and policy makers in agriculture. It describes a socio-economic study dealing with the adoption of IPM packages by mango producers in Kenya and Ethiopia, and their willingness to adopt pest control innovations as related to their socio-economic characteristics. It is my impression, however, that the manuscript requires a major revision. The manuscript is very long, and in some cases reiterative. It requires to be drastically reduced. Some major issues that need to be corrected from my perspective, and which can serve to diminish the size of the manuscript include:
- The title is misleading! The study applied questionnaires, in a survey of mango producers in Kenya and Ethiopia, that aimed at investigating their “willingness” to adopt the IPM technology and relate it to the household characteristics of the surveyed producers. That is, and ex-ante (i.e., before the event happens) approach, and not and ex-post (i.e., after the event happen) analysis. After reading the manuscript I realized that the study is mainly an investigation on the “expectations” of adopting the strategy by farmers (ex-ante), and not the actual adoption patterns of the IPM strategy (ex-post). That is, from the title and abstract (i.e., line 16-17 “the technology has a relatively…”) I taught that the study was collecting information on the rate of adoption (in time) of the IPM strategy. Therefore, I suggest a change in the title to something that reflects the type of study. The abstract should also provide this information. Probably “expected” trends of adoption should be included in the title.
- Throughout the manuscript I found sentences where the authors should be mentioned, not only the reference numbers, to make the sentence comprehensive (i.e., line 148, 154, line 162 line 165, etc). An example where the construction of the sentence leads you to add the author name and that was written correctly is line 477 (“consistent with Allahyari et al [73]”). Contrast this format with the format a few lines before (line 473): “findings by [70, 72]”. Please correct throughout the paper.
- The introduction and aims are correctly stating the previous knowledge and aims. However, section 2, Review of related literature, should be removed and parts of it, especially from line 133, should be incorporated into the introductory section. Usually, a section with a general review is not common in scientific articles, less, general statements as lines 104-132. The introduction should deal directly with the specific topic and what is the missing “brick” that the study is exploring and contributing (i.e., the study’s aim).
- In the methodological section the authors describe and refer to other approaches. The authors should contrast their methodological approaches in the introduction, or in the discussion, were they can contrast the differences between approaches and results. That is, I suggest to remove lines 154-187 and incorporate what is relevant to the introduction or the discussion. The methodology should directly describe the approach taken in this study.
- Line 205: “Figure 49” ?
- Section 3.1, should be drastically reduced: the authors should only refer to their approach, and not to the do a “bibliographical review”. This is not a dissertation!
- The survey approach was well described. This section in fact clearly shows that the study measured the “willingness” and not the factual adoption. Moreover, the questions regarding the “adoption plan” (lines 361-362) are a risky approach to the forecast; they provide evidence on the willingness of the farmer to adopt (and the time framework of the planned adoption) under a certain “state of mind” of the producers at the time of the interview. I believe this should be discussed in the results and discussion section.
- The title of Table 1 is inappropriate. Based on the methodology, the Table describes the “willingness” of farmers to adopt and pay for the IPM strategy. The study did not measure the actual adoption patterns. Please correct.
- Table 2. Again, be careful: the characterization of households should be related to the “willingness” of adopting the strategy, not the “adoption status”. They have not yet adopted the strategy at the time of the survey. Please be careful with your descriptions and conclusions. The study investigates the willingness of farmers.
- Will suggest to change subtitle in line 420: “Household characteristics and willingness to adopt the IPM strategy”
- Section 4.2.1. The description is too wordy.
- The authors use throughout the manuscript the sentence: “consistent with previous literature on the adoption of agricultural innovations” (i.e., line 438). This is a very general statement! Will suggest authors to avoid this type of discussion, and be more specific. In addition, will suggest discussing the special cases for Kenya and Ethiopia for adoption of agricultural innovations, and what specific policies can be applied to increase adoption patterns. Moreover, will be interesting to contrast the socio-economic and cultural conditions and how they may influence the forecast adoption patterns.
- Section 5 provide good conclusions and suggestions for policy applications. I suggest to reduce the previous discussion section, which is too general, and make the discussion more relevant to the experience of Eastern Africa in the adoption of agricultural innovations. The discussion may also focus on analyzing results given the socio-economic and cultural milieu.
Author Response
Thank you for the positive feedback, taking your time, and providing insightful comments that further improves the quality of our paper.
|
Point 1: Open Review: English language and style ((x) Moderate English changes required); Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references (Must be improved); Is the research design appropriate? (Yes); Are the methods adequately described? (Can be improved); Are the results clearly presented? (Can be improved); Are the conclusions supported by the results? (Yes);
Response 1: Thank you for the feedback. We have revised the manuscript and improved the sections mentioned. We hope it reads better than the previous version.
|
|
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Point 2: This manuscript is a very nice contribution to the community of IPM workers and policy makers in agriculture. It describes a socio-economic study dealing with the adoption of IPM packages by mango producers in Kenya and Ethiopia, and their willingness to adopt pest control innovations as related to their socio-economic characteristics. It is my impression, however, that the manuscript requires a major revision. The manuscript is very long, and in some cases reiterative. It requires to be drastically reduced. Some major issues that need to be corrected from my perspective, and which can serve to diminish the size of the manuscript include:
Response 2: Thank you for your positive reflection on our paper. We have removed some of the reiterative sections of the paper, reducing it substantially. We address the specific comments below.
Point 3: The title is misleading! The study applied questionnaires, in a survey of mango producers in Kenya and Ethiopia, that aimed at investigating their “willingness” to adopt the IPM technology and relate it to the household characteristics of the surveyed producers. That is, and ex-ante (i.e., before the event happens) approach, and not and ex-post (i.e., after the event happen) analysis. After reading the manuscript I realized that the study is mainly an investigation on the “expectations” of adopting the strategy by farmers (ex-ante), and not the actual adoption patterns of the IPM strategy (ex-post). That is, from the title and abstract (i.e., line 16-17 “the technology has a relatively…”) I taught that the study was collecting information on the rate of adoption (in time) of the IPM strategy. Therefore, I suggest a change in the title to something that reflects the type of study. The abstract should also provide this information. Probably “expected” trends of adoption should be included in the title.
Response 3: Thank you for this observation. We agree with you that the investigation is on the potential or expected adoption of the strategy (hence the use of contingent valuation approach). However, as we have elaborated in the introduction, a significant effort of promoting the IPM strategy has been done in Kenya, while in Ethiopia it is still in the introduction phase. To capture these differences in the technology assessment timing, we adopted ex-ante and ex-post concepts for Ethiopia and Kenya respectively. We have included a sentence on this (Lines 75-77- clean version) and emphasized throughout the paper that the discussed adoption is “potential”, especially the analysis section.
Point 4: Throughout the manuscript I found sentences where the authors should be mentioned, not only the reference numbers, to make the sentence comprehensive (i.e., line 148, 154, line 162 line 165, etc). An example where the construction of the sentence leads you to add the author name and that was written correctly is line 477 (“consistent with Allahyari et al [73]”). Contrast this format with the format a few lines before (line 473): “findings by [70, 72]”. Please correct throughout the paper.
Response 4: Thank you for highlighting this. We have checked and corrected the revised paper.
Point 5: The introduction and aims are correctly stating the previous knowledge and aims. However, section 2, Review of related literature, should be removed and parts of it, especially from line 133, should be incorporated into the introductory section. Usually, a section with a general review is not common in scientific articles, less, general statements as lines 104-132. The introduction should deal directly with the specific topic and what is the missing “brick” that the study is exploring and contributing (i.e., the study’s aim).
Response 5: We have merged section 2 with the introduction section but maintained the previous knowledge and our study contribution. See the revised manuscript. Thank you.
Point 6: In the methodological section the authors describe and refer to other approaches. The authors should contrast their methodological approaches in the introduction, or in the discussion, were they can contrast the differences between approaches and results. That is, I suggest to remove lines 154-187 and incorporate what is relevant to the introduction or the discussion. The methodology should directly describe the approach taken in this study.
Response 6: Thank you for the suggestion. We have rewritten this section. However, to justify the choice of our empirical model, we retained part of the methodological review (lines 125-147), which we feel is suited better in this section and not in the introduction. We hope the revised version reads better.
Point 7: Line 205: “Figure 49” ?
Response 7: This was an oversight. We have deleted it. Thank you for the correction
Point 8: Section 3.1, should be drastically reduced: the authors should only refer to their approach, and not to the do a “bibliographical review”. This is not a dissertation!
Response 8: We agree with you. We have revised this, retained an introduction of the methods that provide a basis for selection of our model (lines 125-147), and highlighted the explanatory variables (Lines 193-2007). The detailed justification of the choice of the explanatory variables has been moved to results and discussion where we contrast our findings with previous related studies.
Point 9: The survey approach was well described. This section in fact clearly shows that the study measured the “willingness” and not the factual adoption. Moreover, the questions regarding the “adoption plan” (lines 361-362) are a risky approach to the forecast; they provide evidence on the willingness of the farmer to adopt (and the time framework of the planned adoption) under a certain “state of mind” of the producers at the time of the interview. I believe this should be discussed in the results and discussion section.
Response 9: We appreciate this comment. Your observation is correct, and this is one of the critics of Contingent Valuation approaches. However, following previous studies, we took the time to train our enumerators on how to capture farmer’s willingness to pay to ensure that their responses are as close as possible to their factual practice once the strategy has been commercialized. Pictorial images as explained in Lines 237-247 were utilized during data collection. We have added a few sentences in the results and discussion section to emphasize the study focus was on potential and not factual adoption. This also recommends further research to investigate actual adoption, preferably using panel data, once the strategy has been commercialized.
Point 10: The title of Table 1 is inappropriate. Based on the methodology, the Table describes the “willingness” of farmers to adopt and pay for the IPM strategy. The study did not measure the actual adoption patterns. Please correct.
Response 10: We followed previous studies that used a similar approach of determining the potential adoption patterns (Lesser et al., [38], however, we have added the word “Potential” to the title to reflect the willingness of farmers to adopt and pay for the IPM strategy.
Point 11: Table 2. Again, be careful: the characterization of households should be related to the “willingness” of adopting the strategy, not the “adoption status”. They have not yet adopted the strategy at the time of the survey. Please be careful with your descriptions and conclusions. The study investigates the willingness of farmers.
Response 11: We agree with your observation. As done in Table 1, we have added the word “Potential” to the Table title and edited the result and discussion and conclusions sections accordingly.
Point 12: Will suggest to change subtitle in line 420: “Household characteristics and willingness to adopt the IPM strategy”
Response 12: Thank you for the suggestion. However, to differentiate this section from the previous section on descriptive statistics, I would wish to add the word “potential” and rephrase it to read as follows, “Determinants of the potential adoption of Fruit fly IPM”.
Point 13: Section 4.2.1. The description is too wordy.
Response 13: We have rewritten this section in the revised version
Point 14: The authors use throughout the manuscript the sentence: “consistent with previous literature on the adoption of agricultural innovations” (i.e., line 438). This is a very general statement! Will suggest authors to avoid this type of discussion and be more specific. In addition, will suggest discussing the special cases for Kenya and Ethiopia for adoption of agricultural innovations, and what specific policies can be applied to increase adoption patterns. Moreover, will be interesting to contrast the socio-economic and cultural conditions and how they may influence the forecast adoption patterns.
Response 14: Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have checked and corrected throughout the manuscript and where possible provided comparisons of previous studies from the study countries with our findings. Although we did not quite understand your last statement, we have attempted to expand how these explanatory factors influence the potential adoption patterns (see revised section 4.2.3).
Point 15: Section 5 provide good conclusions and suggestions for policy applications. I suggest to reduce the previous discussion section, which is too general, and make the discussion more relevant to the experience of Eastern Africa in the adoption of agricultural innovations. The discussion may also focus on analyzing results given the socio-economic and cultural milieu.
Response 15: We believe this is related to Point 14. We have attempted to address this point by rewriting the results and discussion section.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a well-written manuscript. From the title and abstract I was expecting more emphasis on the forecasting (specifically section 4.2.3). If there is more to be said here, please do.
There are minor points of clarification needed. I have embedded comments in the pdf.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Thank you for taking the time to read our manuscript and to provide useful feedback to improve our paper.
Point 1: Open Review: English language and style [English language and style are fine/minor spell check required]; Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references? [Yes]; Is the research design appropriate? [Yes]; Are the methods adequately described? [Yes]; Are the results clearly presented? [Yes]; Are the conclusions supported by the results? [Yes];
Response 1: Thank you for the positive feedback.
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Point 2: This is a well-written manuscript. From the title and abstract I was expecting more emphasis on the forecasting (specifically section 4.2.3). If there is more to be said here, please do.
Response 2: Thank you for this observation. We have added a few sentences to bring more emphasis on forecasting in the introduction and section 4.2.3 in the revised version.
Point 3: There are minor points of clarification needed. I have embedded comments in the pdf (peer-review-7613429.v2.pdf)
Response 3: Thank you for the comments; we have addressed the minor in the revised document. Below we respond to the few that you asked for clarification or our rebuttal.
Point 4: Line 13-14 (Such a new technology that farmers have limited information prior to commercialization may have diffusion paths that are different from the often-assumed sigmoid shape):- Confusing - big jump and assumption as to what is a sigmoid shape
Response 4: We assume you recommend revising the language. We have revised this to read as follows; Such a new technology that farmers have limited information before commercialization may have diffusion paths that are different from the often-assumed sigmoid (or “s”) shaped curve.
Point 5: Line 28 Delete “Dominantly...”
Response 5: We suggest maintaining this word to emphasize that smallholders are the majority in the mango growing sub-sector.
Point 6: Line 75: “..comparison farmers and the control.” not clear what the "treatment farmers" is. is it "IPM treatment and no control'?
Response 6: “Treatment” refers to households that were using the fruit fly IPM users, while “Control” was the IPM non-users
Point 7: Line 92-93 “Subsequently, justifying the need to evaluate what appears as an increasing trend based on ongoing promotion activities by the African fruit fly program [18,21,22]” incomplete sentence; justification is needed?
Response 7: Thank you for this observation. This sentence is meant to show the research gap that justifies the current study. We have rephrased it (Lines 110-111) and added another short sentence (Lines 111-112) and hope it reads as a complete sentence and captures our intended message.
Point 8: Line 112 “…coffee production in Hawaii...” Hawaii is part of the USA and the USA is usually not considered a developing nation
Response 8: You are right. This example was supposed to be excluded but was forgot. We have now excluded it.
Point 9: Table 2: This is a large table. Maybe some information can be put into an appendix table
Response 9: I would request to retain as such as it provides a description and descriptive summary of the variables utilized in the regression analysis.
Point 10: Line 425: confusing style - this is used for references
Response 10: We agree, we have replaced this with a different bracket format.
Point 11: 426: Better to just say variable names instead of “Column number”
Response 11: thank you for the suggestion. However, we are referring to the entire column, thus difficult to point out to a single variable.
Point 12: Line 580: “…replaced indigenous mango trees with high yielding improved varieties.” This was not tested here, so either provide a reference to support the statement or remove the statement
Response 12: You observed correctly. We have deleted this in the current version.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript has been highly improved. I still have some difficulty with keeping the ex-post analysis, which in the current use in the title (and in the abstract, i.e. lines 16-18, “high adoption rate”) is misleading to the reader. They justify the title in lines 75-77, and propose that in Kenya the suggested IPM package, or part of it, has been partially adopted by farmers in certain regions (References 31 and 32), thus it is for Kenya an “ex-post” situation and for Ethiopia and “ex-ante” situation. They also propose that the use of the multinomial logit model allows the forecast of future adoption rates given the availability of the technology, and refer to Lesser et al, 1999, to justify the use of this analytical methodology (reference 37). This reference in fact suggest methodologies for the ex ante projections of adoption rates, which is what the current study evaluated. As far as I understand the study, which is an important contribution to the knowledge of technological dissemination of IPM strategies, it is an evaluation and analysis of the possibilities of adoption and expansion of the technology in mango production in Kenya and Ethiopia. This aim is clearly stated in line 117-118: “make predictions of adoption”. A possibility to fuse the two perceptions (mine as a reader, and the one of the authors as producers of the study and manuscript) is to slightly change the title incorporating the fact that the study was conducted under an “ex-post” adoption environment in Kenya vs. an ex-ante environment in Ethiopia. This is only a suggestion, and does not weakens the value and contribution of the study. By the way, I also suggest to add “potential” in the title of Table 3, as done in Table 2.
Author Response
2nd Revision
Response to reviewer’s comments for paper
“Potential Adoption of Integrated Pest Management Strategy for Suppression of Mango Fruit flies in East Africa: An ex-ante and ex-post analysis in Ethiopia and Kenya”
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Thank you once again for the prompt review of our manuscript and for the positive feedback. My co-authors and I are glad to know you were satisfied with our responses, and we appreciate your additional comments to improve our paper.
Point 1: Open Review: English language and style(x) English language and style are fine/minor spell check required: Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references (Yes); Is the research design appropriate? (Yes); Are the methods adequately described? (Yes); Are the results clearly presented? (Yes); Are the conclusions supported by the results? (Yes);
Response 1: Thank you for the positive feedback; we have checked and corrected throughout the manuscript for spelling typos.
Point 2: The manuscript has been highly improved. I still have some difficulty with keeping the ex-post analysis, which in the current use in the title (and in the abstract, i.e. lines 16-18, “high adoption rate”) is misleading to the reader. They justify the title in lines 75-77, and propose that in Kenya the suggested IPM package, or part of it, has been partially adopted by farmers in certain regions (References 31 and 32), thus it is for Kenya an “ex-post” situation and for Ethiopia and “ex-ante” situation. They also propose that the use of the multinomial logit model allows the forecast of future adoption rates given the availability of the technology, and refer to Lesser et al, 1999, to justify the use of this analytical methodology (reference 37). This reference in fact suggest methodologies for the ex ante projections of adoption rates, which is what the current study evaluated. As far as I understand the study, which is an important contribution to the knowledge of technological dissemination of IPM strategies, it is an evaluation and analysis of the possibilities of adoption and expansion of the technology in mango production in Kenya and Ethiopia. This aim is clearly stated in line 117-118: “make predictions of adoption”. A possibility to fuse the two perceptions (mine as a reader, and the one of the authors as producers of the study and manuscript) is to slightly change the title incorporating the fact that the study was conducted under an “ex-post” adoption environment in Kenya vs. an ex-ante environment in Ethiopia. This is only a suggestion and does not weakens the value and contribution of the study.
Response 2: We appreciate your comment, and glad to know the manuscript reads better than the previous version. Thank you for your observation on the use of “ex-post analysis”. You correctly identified our justification for this analysis in Kenya vs “ex-ante analysis” in Ethiopia. We are grateful for your suggestion of amending the title to reflect the adoption environment at the time of the study. However, unfortunately, we are not able to find a precise way of incorporating the adoption environment status in the title. As we have done with the rest of the sections, we have added the word “Potential” at the beginning of the title, and hope this supports the “analysis of the possibilities of adoption” in both countries although the study timing was different.
Point 3: By the way, I also suggest to add “potential” in the title of Table 3, as done in Table 2.
Response 3: Thank you for the suggestion. We have corrected it in the revised version.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
