Opportunities for the Scale-Up of Irrigation Systems in Ghana, West Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Abbreviations are explained throughout the text the first time they are used. For this reason, I recommend that the section in which all the abbreviations are compiled be placed at the end of the article.

On the other hand, why do L. 316 and 318 have the same numbering and different titles? In addition, in the section "4.5 Competitive Opportunities within the Irrigation Sector" there is no content. Please check that part.

The rest of the comments indicated in the previous version have been fixed. Thus, thank you for your dedication and time.

Author Response

We have attempted to respond to all comments in our manuscript.  We have attached our commentary on the changes made to the document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript concerns the important issue of the economic analysis of the scale-up of irrigation systems in Ghana. Remarks: In what way the adopted research goal contributes to science? Lack of detailed bibliometric analyses. The reference abbreviation of journal papers should be presented. Authors should check the references, according to the journal’s guidelines. Add the section of the discussion: what do your findings mean, how these can be explained, and which research biases are revealed by your study? In the conclusions, a list of the main findings and interpretation, practical recommendations, and research perspectives should be presented.

Author Response

We have attempted to respond to all comments in our manuscript.  We have attached our commentary on the changes made to the document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I appreciate your efforts, but it is not possible to consider the content of point 3 as a scientific methodology. This paper is a very interesting technical survey, but not a scientistic paper.

Author Response

We have attempted to respond to all comments in our manuscript.  We have attached our commentary on the changes made to the document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Accept in present form.

Author Response

Many thanks for your efforts.

 

Bob Stwalley

Reviewer 3 Report

I appreciate your efforts, but it is not possible to consider the content of point 3 as a scientific methodology. This paper is a very interesting technical survey, but not a scientistic paper.

Author Response

While we respectfully disagree on this point, we thank you for your time and effort to review our manuscript.

 

Bob Stwalley

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

Main comments and Suggestions for Authors:

Introduction section: The literature and theoretical background should add more relevant studies in order to understand the current situation and serve as a precedent for the study to be carried out. Moreover, you should avoid repeating the references numerous times. For example, reference 1 is repeated 8 times along the introduction and literature review.

Methodology part: There is a lack of information that allows us to understand the process carried out. For example, when was the search performed? How has the information been processed?

Also, referring to some of the explanations given in this section:

• It would be ideal to specify the terms related to irrigation problems in Ghana that were applied in order to obtain more information about the process carried out.
• "He went from 5 years to 15 just to get more articles". Why not 20 or 10? This decision must be reasoned.
• “The articles reviewed had to make reference to Ghana in the content of the article and contain some component of agricultural water” How was it verified? Reading the full documents? or only abstract and conclusions? Information is missing.
• “Of the articles on water reviewed, those that mention a specific water component for irrigation were additionally filtered” What were the terms that were considered components? Was there a previously defined list?
• “Because many international development programs take place over a five-year funding period, some older documents were selected as these programs were specific to irrigation programming within Ghana.” This phrase means that, therefore, the methodology was not applied for 15 years, but up to a maximum of 20 to be able to introduce those that had financing?

Bibliography: Check the references and their style are according to the journal requirements, as they do not currently meet them.

Specific comments:

1. All the abbreviations that have been included throughout the text must initially be explained. An example of this is found in the abstract using "ha" or "Mha", as some readers may not understand the abbreviations.
2. The two authors belong to the same institution, so you do not have to indicate different numbers.
3. Why is a III indicated after Robert M. Stwalley's name?
4. In the keywords section, it is recommended to shorten to 6 representative words, instead of having 10.
5. It is recommended to merge the references when more than one is specified in a row, for example L. 48, L. 75, L. 161, L. 162, L. 238, L.243, L.397 and L. 406.
6. It must be corrected every time the reference is written and then indicated in numerical form. For instance, L.77-78, L. 134, L.231 and L. 255-257.
7. The sections between 4.5 and 4.9 must introduce a space between the title and the content to differentiate the sections correctly.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript concerns the important  issue of the economic analysis of the scale-up of irrigation systems in Ghana. Remarks: Better quality of the following table should be provided: Table 1. Ghana Irrigation System Classification (Namara, Horowitz, Kovalli, Kranjac-Berisaljevic, Dawuni, Barry, & Giordano, 2010). In what way the adopted research goal contributes to science? Lack of detailed bibliometric analyses. In the reference abbreviation of journal papers and DOI number should be presented. Authors should check the whole text, figures, references and improve them, according to journal’s guidelines. Add the section of the discussion: what do your findings mean, how these can be explained, and which research biases are revealed by your study? In the conclusions a list of the main findings and interpretation, practical recommendations, and research perspectives shoul be presented.

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper makes a review of the agricultural irrigation system in Ghana. I don’t know why the authors introduce the word “economic” in the title. I was not able to find any economic term mentioned in the article.

Apart from the “economic” term use, it could be very interesting a survey of irrigation systems and agricultural production in Ghana. A review of the past, present, and government planning for the future. This review must include water availability, land use, and food production (or national food production coverage rate). However, it is a pity that the authors didn’t conduct this analysis.

If we talk about numbers contented in the article, we can find:

1. irrigation surface: Potential (FAO survey): 1.9 million hectares. In 2000: 30,900 hectares. Actually: 90% of 2000 coverage. Government planning: 500.000 hectares more.
2. Water resources and water use: no data. Just a percentage: 1.2% of today renewable resources (page 5).
3. Type of crops and production: no data.

The issue is therefore how to conduct an economic analysis without any economic and production data.

Besides the economic issue, what can we read in this article? Some information and analysis of the farm size, the access to irrigation equipment, and analysis of the constraints for development new irrigation land, and no more.

I miss several data and technical processes in this document in order to consider it as a scientific article.