Insecticide Use by Small-Scale Ugandan Cassava Growers: An Economic Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments to the authors have been indicated in the reviewed pdf. However, a few of them are listed below.

Provide a citation for the statement made in lines 46-48.

Add a map to support the locations indicated in lines 91-94 since the GPS coordinates were not provided.

Why was this (systemic) insecticide used? Is it one of the recommended products for use on cassava in the country?

Provide information on what influenced the application interval/timing used in lines 101-105 and the corresponding citation. Are these some of the recommended spraying intervals/periods for the crop in the country?

Any reasons for the selection of NASE3, NASE 12 and MKUMBA?

Why was the cost of the cuttings (planting materials) not factored in? Was it assumed that the price of the various varieties is the same?

 

There are lots of inconsistencies in the referencing style. The authors should redo the references list.

As indicated above, other comments and corrections have been done in the reviewed pdf.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

I would like to state that the suggestions by the reviewer have been effected to bring much clarity in some of the statements. 

I thank the reviewer for the constructive feedback, which we consider has strengthened our manuscript. For clarity, revisions to the text have been marked up using “Track Changes” function.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The author need to revise the manuscript before it is published

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

I would like to state that the suggestions by the reviewer have been effected to bring much clarity in some of the statements. 

I thank the reviewer for the constructive feedback, which we consider has strengthened our manuscript. For clarity, revisions to the text have been marked up using “Track Changes” function.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Keep it up!

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

Please see my specific comments below;

1.  The contribution of this study to the existing body of literature is unclear from the introduction. The authors performed a limited review of the prior literature. It is necessary to include a section describing the prior literature and identifying the research gap and contribution of this study.

2. Section 2.1 of the methodology section is unclear. How did you estimate the value of equation 3? What is the discount rate. What time period did your CBA analysis consider?

3. Why did you only compute BCR? NPV can be easily calculated using equation 3, which is more accepted than BCR.

4. Equation 7 is ambiguous. You mentioned three input variables in the equation. However, you reported two variables in Table 13. It is necessary to explain the variables.

5. At times, the style and language are extremely difficult to comprehend. For instance, lines 280, 314, and 324 are unclear. Please check the manuscript once more.

6. The most significant limitation of this paper is the discussion. The discussion section is extremely weak. Please revise this section to include an explanation of the findings and a connection to policy implications.

7. Modify the title of Table 11

8. Tables are not self-explanatory. For instance, what does LnPchem app mean? Tables must be defined clearly.

9. Please check the referencing style of the journal.

Author Response

Please see the detailed response attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper is an interesting study and I will provide my comments to the researcher to improve the composition of the article.  

1. In the introduction part, it is suggested to strengthen the motivation of the narrative study and the current situation of small farmers using insecticides to control cassava whitefly in Uganda, so as to increase readers' interest in reading.  

2. In the literature review part, it is recommended to add previous research in the past two years in order to compare the research status of this paper with previous research.  

3. I think the method part is correct.  

4. In the RESULTS AND DISCUSSION part, my suggestion is to conduct a comparative discussion with previous literature.  Therefore, the authors are requested to add comparative analysis with previous studies.  

 5. Finally, in the conclusion part, I think the author's writing is very good, concise and clear, so that readers can understand at a glance, but I still want to suggest that the author strengthen the contribution of this research to make this article more readable.    

Good luck with your research!

Author Response

Please see the detailed response attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your revised version. However, most of the corrections made by the authors are superfluous. Some examples are given below:

First round comment: 1.  The contribution of this study to the existing body of literature is unclear from the introduction. The authors performed a limited review of the prior literature. It is necessary to include a section describing the prior literature and identifying the research gap and contribution of this study.

Author Response: Corrections made: please see section 1 lines 60-101.

Further comment: I did not observe any improvements to the introduction. The authors simply revised the structure of a few sentences without adding any new information. What is the research gap and the study's contribution is not at all clear.

First round comment 2: Section 2.1 of the methodology section is unclear. How did you estimate the value of equation 3? What is the discount rate. What time period did your CBA analysis consider? 

Author response: Explanation included: see section 2.1 lines 192-194

Further comment: The equation (3) is completely incorrect. As written, Equation 3 does not indicate that BCR is the ratio of gross benefit to total cost. Before writing an equation, you must comprehend its meaning. BCR can be calculated in two ways: with and without discounting. The equation you provided is a discounted BCR measurement. For discounted measures, discount rate and duration are required (year). In your BCR, no discounting factor was applied.

First round comment 3. Why did you only compute BCR? NPV can be easily calculated using equation 3, which is more accepted than BCR.

Author response: Explanation included: see lines 161-179

Further comment: Again, the explanation given by the author is not suitable for this study. Before providing any explanation, you must comprehend the study's context. For example you wrote that 'Since unrelated treatments were assessed, and the budget for funding the treatments was limited, the treatments were ranked using BCR not Net Present Value (NPV)'. What is the definition of Budget? Did you consider research and development costs, as well as extension costs? There are no indications in the paper as to how BCR was calculated using equation 3.

First round comment 4. Equation 7 is ambiguous. You mentioned three input variables in the equation. However, you reported two variables in Table 13. It is necessary to explain the variables.

Author response: Corrections made: see Table 13.

Further comment: First, I would like to request that the authors be specific in their response letter. Your responses are extremely vague. You stated, "The labour to apply chemical input variable was removed from the model due to multicollinearity, leaving two input variables in the model." You only have two variables remaining after removing one. There was no justification for estimating the cost function with two variables. In addition, your sample size was not mentioned in the article. What is the total number of samples in this study?

First round comment 6. The most significant limitation of this paper is the discussion. The discussion section is extremely weak. Please revise this section to include an explanation of the findings and a connection to policy implications.

Author response: This was addressed and made better. See results and discussion section.

Further comment: I have reviewed the section on results and discussion. You just rewrote one or two sentences without including any new information. There is no explanation of the relationship between the results and policy implications.