Determinant of University Students’ Choices and Preferences of Agricultural Sub-Sector Engagement in Cameroon

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The references must be improved.

If the authors would involve in part conclusions some suggestions for government actions forward increasing the engagement in Agricultural sub-sector would be required.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

No significant observations. I consider the manuscript to be theoretically well set up and methodologically correct. The statement in lines 108/109 is not clear to me. What does that mean...We hypothesize that students’ socio-economic characteristics do not significantly in- 108
fluence the choice of agricultural sub-sector engagement>>>? Expalin the meaning better.

Author Response

In lines 114/115, the research hypothesis is stated in its null form. The assumption is that students’ socioeconomic characteristics have no significant influence on their choices and/or preferences. This postulation/hypothesis provides the basis to prove the validity of the research. It should either be refuted or affirmed based on research finding. Our results permit us to reject the null hypothesis. Those socioeconomic characteristics are age, sex, the current level of education, religious background, location of the childhood home, perceived inherent opportunities, pre-university farming experience, the main occupation of sponsor/mentor/father, pre-university educational background, pre-university contact with agricultural experts and pre-university academic performance, father’s level of education, mother’s level of education, student’s birth position and household income).

 

The authors therefore disagree with the reviewer's comment and have not made any changes to the lines in question. 

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper deals with the issue of youth employment in agriculture in Cameroon, which is a very interesting topic from the perspective of both developing and developed countries. Young people - especially if they are prepared after a course of study - are a source of innovation and openness to change and it is therefore important to have a generational change in all contexts.

The methodological approach is correct.

Agriculture becomes a source of attraction for a young person if, however, it is market-oriented and with an accessible and modern level of capitalization and technology. This requires infrastructure, production services, entrepreneurial skills and resources for scientific research and technological development. Otherwise, it is quite understandable that preference is given to all the activities connected and collateral to the strictly agricultural production system. However, another thing is also true, and that is that agriculture develops by increasing its relationships of interdependence with upstream, downstream and downstream sectors, so it is quite normal that there should be this increase in the interest of young people.

Therefore, I believe that the swot analysis must be carried out upstream of the actual experimental research, illustrating the general conditions facing agriculture in the country, identifying the potential for concrete integration of young people and then assessing the propensity of young agricultural students/graduates.

You, in the paper, talk about the swot in three lines (252-254) you say it was built on the students' answers, but instead it has to be obtained from the involvement of different stakeholders (you make ample reference to the literature). In any case it goes to 4.1 instead of the characters of the respondents and it would have been better if it had reported what young people see of agriculture.

Other suggestions for improving the paper are as follows:

There is a perspective throughout the paper i.e. that the young person should fit in as a "worker in agriculture" (negative perception) and not as an "agricultural entrepreneur" i.e. the person responsible for technical and economic choices.

This is a misperception that should be changed. Because it is the reported weaknesses that make the agricultural sector unattractive

In the choice of sample, there is something to clarify: Was the survey carried out in 2018 or did you follow up on students matriculating in 2018/19 to find out today whether they have obtained a degree or doctorate? Are all students matriculating in 2018 graduating on course? No outliers? No dropouts? The reasoning needs to be simplified because it is convoluted this way.

A student entering a course of study - even if he or she has made a conscious choice - is not necessarily aware of all the issues in agriculture and can therefore confidently decide what to do in the future. Are the curricula at the two universities (University of Buea and University of Dschang) equivalent? Do they provide the same background knowledge to the student? Or do they have a different orientation (e.g. small-scale agriculture in one and agribusiness in the other). This influences job choices.

Monetary data (Household revenue) must present a comparison with an international currency in order to be understood by all potentially interested readers.

I imagine that Cameroon has an unequal distribution of income, with part of the population having an income below the poverty line. So with the classes you have indicated, it is possible for a family to support the young person in entering agriculture. But this also depends on the size of the household (n children).

It is necessary to indicate the limits of the study (the Location of the childhood home is urban in most of the sample can be understood as a sign of detachment from agriculture towards different socio-economic levels and for this reason explain the low propensity of young people, just as the educational qualification of the mothers is positively correlated because the mothers are more conservative or attentive to the preservation of environmental and landscape values of the territory) and the prospects for future research developments.

In the conclusions, a link should be developed with problems relating to the country's commercial dependence and imbalances in the balance of trade and balance of payments (imports and foreign currency exposure), the relationship between resources (land, for example) and population, the availability of financial resources for credit, the competition exerted by non-agricultural, industrial, tourist and residential uses of land, and the backwardness of technology.

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Editor,
Dear Authors,
I consider the article presented for review to be very good and valuable, especially in the context of the conditions for undertaking agricultural studies. It is also an important problem in Europe, where young people are leaving agriculture, focusing on technical and IT sciences, and yet the huge agri-food industry is developing very dynamically and requires qualified staff.
The article is very good in all respects. Adequate justification of the undertaken problem, well-described methodology, and the described research results. The weakest point are conclusions that are not a synthesis of the research and analyzes carried out, but a repetition of the previously described results. I believe it needs to be redrafted in the form of 2-3 points. Here you need to concretely summarize the research carried out.
After the conclusions are corrected, the article can be published.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for his/her good comment. This has been addressed in the conclusions along lines 635-660