Integrated Sustainability Planning and Local Food Systems: Examining Areas of and Gaps in Food Systems Integration in Community Sustainability Plans for Municipalities across British Columbia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I really like this paper and think it will add nicely to the applied research on local food systems planning, an area that you noted as being not yet well-developed.

In your introduction and discussion sections, you could reference similar planning processes that take place across North America, Europe, and beyond, in order to expand the appeal to audiences from other places.  Similar analyses could take place within these other contexts, so why not make that more clear?

In your discussion and conclusions sections, you did not address the fact that these are only plans and, as we well know, the best laid plans do not always result in intended actions as set forth in the plans.  So, I would encourage you to further contextualize the planning process into a broader social change dynamic that includes not only planning, but also implementation of the plans (and lack thereof for various reasons) and adjustments in initial plans based upon whatever realities social change agents encounter.  Planning is important, for sure.  But, so are the factors that either encourage or discourage the actual implementation.  

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors review municipalities’ sustainability plans in British Columbia to try to uncover similarities and differences in people’s interests and definitions, focusing on food systems and their interactions with other considerations. The work seems scientifically interesting. Moreover, the writing is easy to read.

I would make two broad statements after reading the manuscript.

First broad point

As far as I can tell, the authors are to be commended for giving an assessment without slipping into broader assessments, judgments, or recommendations not based on their work. Whereas some writing makes it difficult to see where the science ends and judgments begin, the authors of this manuscript seem to me to have succeeded well in this area. Consequently, they maintain credibility and the results of their analysis can be understood as scientific fact appropriately published in a journal.

Indeed, I saw only one example of a case where I wondered at a claim that the authors put before us and that was in the introduction. (“…an integrated food system should deepen the support and protection of local food economies, thus bolstering the global food network as a whole” is justified by one old reference from a journal about “alternative agriculture” despite the large scope of the sentence.)

Second broad point

I worried that the focus on a regional basis risks putting too much focus on the interests of people in sparsely populated areas overwhelm the majority of people’s interests. The Southwest accounts for nearly half the BC population, if I understand Table 1 data correctly. Yet the results for this region are combined with all the others as though they are equals throughout. However, authors focus makes the differences more important than the population weights.

The focus on regional differences is the point the authors make. They recommend changes in how frameworks are developed. As such, my concern about over-representation of some people and under-representation of others is irrelevant.

If authors or readers were to go on and propose specific policies or practices, then my concerns would seem relevant. In that case, one would have to show how each policy or practice is assessed and whether the comparisons are based on regional equality or somehow population-weighted. But there would be other, large hurdles to clear, such as proving that this use of money is better than other uses.

As it is, the regional scope of the numerical analysis is well chosen. I guess there could be some reason to look more at a municipality basis without regard to regional location, perhaps relating the presence of various terms in ICSPs to the municipality demographics using correlation or even regression analysis (with 162 municipalities as observations).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf