On-Farm Assessment of Maize Storage and Conservation Technologies in the Central and Northern Republic of Benin
and Gauthier Biaou 4Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Very good paper and important for agriculture not only in West Africa.
Author Response
Reply to reviewers’ second round comments on manuscript agriculture-1011182 “On-farm assessment of maize storage and conservation technologies in Central and North Republic of Benin”
We want to thank this reviewer for the time spent on going through this paper again
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors did a good job in explaining and exploring the technical and financial processes of the maize storage conservation technologies in the Central and North Republic of Benin. The following issues could be addressed for better presentation quality.
- Lines like 55, 64, 68, 84, 87, 88, 187: when you want to use citations as subjects or objects, you need to specify the authors' names like Sissinto-Gbenou et al. [2].
- A short paragraph on line 91-93 is not necessary.
- Could you explain what sentences 106-109 mean? "However, all of producers who started the experiments in the first year did not continue until the third year. As a result, some producers participated in the storage trials for the three years, while some participated for two years and others only participated for one year."
- Line 240-241: Section 2.6.4: when you vary fixed costs and selling prices of maize, which distribution do you follow? Please specify. Why there is a "03" after "three"?
- Line 383-384: Please put the table title and the table contents on the same page.
- Please format Appendix 1-4, some of the words are not in one line.
- A general question: this is a deterministic financial analysis, why not a stochastic one? Which process is subject to uncertainties? Please discuss in the discussion section.
- The authors need to check the use of articles again.
Author Response
Reply to reviewers’ second round comments on manuscript agriculture-1011182 “On-farm assessment of maize storage and conservation technologies in Central and North Republic of Benin”
We want to thank this reviewer for the time spent on going through this paper again and for the comments and suggestions that certainly have led to an improvement of the manuscript. We tried to take the suggestions into account. Where necessary we have changed the text of the manuscript to explain better what we did. We did not receive any additional comments or suggestions from the Reviewer 1.
Reply to Reviewer 2
Point 1: Lines like 55, 64, 68, 84, 87, 88, 187: when you want to use citations as subjects or objects, you need to specify the authors' names like Sissinto-Gbenou et al. [2].
Response 1: We thank the reviewer for his suggestion. It has been taken into account.
Point 2: A short paragraph on line 91-93 is not necessary.
Response 2: We agree with the reviewer on this comment. The short paragraph on line 91-93 has been removed.
Point 3: Could you explain what sentences 106-109 mean? "However, all of producers who started the experiments in the first year did not continue until the third year. As a result, some producers participated in the storage trials for the three years, while some participated for two years and others only participated for one year."
Response 3: These sentences are revised in the current version of the manuscript. These sentences were replaced by: « The experiments were carried out over three years. In the first year, 23 and 27 farmers were selected in Savalou and Boukoumbé, respectively based on their willingness to host and ability to manage the storage experimental trials. To perform analyses, we used data from farmers who participated in the trials for two successive years, either the first and second years, or the second and third years. This gave rise to a total of 12 producers in Central Benin (Savalou) and 13 in Northern Benin (Boukoumbé)»
Point 4: Line 240-241: Section 2.6.4: when you vary fixed costs and selling prices of maize, which distribution do you follow? Please specify. Why there is a "03" after "three"?
- "03" was removed throughout the text.
Point 5: Line 383-384: Please put the table title and the table contents on the same page.
Point 6: Please format Appendix 1-4, some of the words are not in one line.
Point 7: A general question: this is a deterministic financial analysis, why not a stochastic one? Which process is subject to uncertainties? Please discuss in the discussion section.
Response 7: We agree with the reviewer that we perform a deterministic financial analysis. We did not think about a stochastic analysis. Farmers faced two kinds of risk: the biological (infestation, drought, etc.) and financial (output and input prices fluctuations) risks. Sensivity analysis can help to evaluate the effect of financial risk on the performance of the height treatments. Accordingly, the effect of maize sale prices fluctuation is evaluated. To further take into account the concern of the reviewer 2, we add in the sensitivity analysis increases of maize sales prices. Therefore, we increased and decreased the maize sales price by 30% and 40%, while maintaining the 10% increase in fixed costs. The discussion section is now revised as suggested by the reviewer.
Point 8: The authors need to check the use of articles again.
Response 8: The correction is done as suggested by the reviewer.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The study is interesting for the duration of the research which was very long. Your work is missing several qualitative chemical-physical analyzes.I advise you to add data concerning qualitative analisis, more information on materials and products. Also I have never seen an abstract with the reference (n ° 22 and 12).
I also believe it is necessary to highlight the significant differences over time and between treatments in the tables where ​​are shown values
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a very well written valuable contribution to the research community focusing on grain storage. The design of the analysis is described appropriately. However, despite this, the statistical hypothesis test is not described and the results section lacks demonstration of results of statistical tests, which should be possible based on the data gathered. As it is it is impossible to judge if the observed differences are statistically significant or not.
