Occupational Safety Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice among Farmers in Northern Nigeria during Pesticide Application—A Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors state that the objective of the study is to measure Northern Nigerian farmers’ safety knowledge, awareness, and practices related to pesticide application on farm land (lines 99-100). This is an interesting issue but the manuscript substantially suffers.

The most important weaknesses are next noted, in combination with some suggestions:

- The authors study the farmers' knowledge, attitudes and their behavior, without adequately justifying why they choose them as well as without a clear definition for the relationships between them. They should set certain goals or/and hypotheses and better establish bibliographically what exactly they intend to study.

- They do not sufficiently explain why they built the present form of the questionnaire, how they built each set of the questions. For example, why did they choose the certain questions corresponding to the content of the table 2, to study the producers' knowledge?

- They do not explain whether the sample of the respondents is representative.

- The only relationship between the variables the authors examine is the causal relation between farmers' demographic characteristics and their decision to use empty pesticides containers for other use. This looks to be the single finding on which the authors are based to identify the factors that determine the safe use of pesticides. This is not sufficient!

- The authors don't sufficiently discuss their results in comparison to those of the previous studies. They should deeper discuss their results and give some generalizations in the discussion or in conclusion section.

- The conclusions of the manuscript are too poor.

- Because it isn't apparent how the probable bias errors are eliminated, the authors should clearly define the methods (and measures) they used to eliminate the "interview biases".

- Because some grammatical errors there exist, a word processing is needed.

- The authors should check if the references they reported follow the journal guidelines.

- They should give the necessary definitions for the abbreviations, in the first time these are noted.

I suggest the authors to substantially revise their manuscript, following the above comments and resubmit it.

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Many thanks for the comments and suggestion raised on our manuscript. Find attached response to each point earlier raised.

Many thanks 

Haruna 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript entitled "Pesticide Occupational Safety Knowledge, Attitude and Practice among farmers in Northern Nigeria-A Case Study" studies the farmers’ safety knowledge, awareness, and practices related to pesticide use. The idea is good and local mentioned showed effective survey data. The manuscript has certain shortcomings that need to be incorporated. The annotated file is attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Many thanks for the comments and suggestion raised on our manuscript. Find attached our response to each point earlier raised.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear editor taking into consideration the improvements the authors conducted in their manuscript coupled with their response to my comments. The authors could further enhance the value of the manuscript by correcting some grammatical errors or typos, e.g. line 244. They could also borrow useful ideas from an analogous paper: “Is the Environmental Behavior of Farmers Affecting Their Pesticide Practices? A Case Study from Greece”. Sustainability 2021, 13, 1452. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031452

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 

Many thanks for the time taken to review our submission. 

We believe that based on your comments and collective effort from our side, all observation raised has now been addressed and presented in  blue font. 

Best regards 

Reviewer 2 Report

The revised manuscript "Occupational Safety Knowledge, Attitude and Practice among Farmers in Northern Nigeria during Pesticide Application-A Case Study " can be accepted for publication. Just some typos should be corrected, as follows:

L.23: Change “pesticide” by “pesticides”
Ls.64-67: Revise this sentence to eliminate wordiness.
Ls.160-161: … data considered [5]. A…
L.286: … study provides insight into…
L.287: Change “pesticides” by “pesticide”
L.299: … but over-reliance on…
L.318: … apply pesticides on their farms thrice…
L.337: … having a significant effect pest control on…
Ls.342-344: Sentence is unclear. Rewrite.
L.348: Change “pesticide” by “pesticides”
L.349: Change “expert” by “experts”

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

We appreciate the taken taken to go through our submission and provide further comments that helped improved the paper quality further. 

All suggested corrections have now been made in blue font. 

Many thanks