Drivers of Environmental Conservation Agriculture in Sado Island, Niigata Prefecture, Japan
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
The article is interesting and the research design well-conceived.
My major concerns involve the organisation of contents (and at times the excessive length) and the lack of methodological explanations in the methods section.
- The introduction presents ECA as a way to address climate change. However, in the rest of the ms a lot of importance is given to a variety of environmental problems. I suggest revising the beginning of the article (statement of the problem) to cover the multiple impacts of agriculture on the environment. Related to that, it is not clear from the introduction if you are focusing on paddy fields only or on different types of agricultural land uses (this applies to the abstract, as well).
- I suggest improving the introduction by highlighting the research gaps your research aims at bridging and its contribution.
- The introduction presents a lot of information about the case study. This information provides the context for the research and would benefit more visibility a better presentation. I suggest removing details about the case study from the introduction (a rationale for case study selection would be enough for the introduction) and from section 2. That information should be conveyed in a new “case study” section, to be placed between methods and results.
- Section 2 should detail methods and data. Currently, that information is dispersed within the results section and in part is attached ad supplementary materials. This makes difficult for the reader to follow the logical flow of the research. For example, it is not clear to me if you somewhat combined quantitative with qualitative data and how.
- The results section would benefit some rationalisation. I suggest focusing just on analytical findings, by removing information about data (to be placed in section 2) and the discussion of findings. In the ms you discuss findings twice, i.e. in the results and in the discussion sections. I suggest selecting the key information you want to present and get rid of the rest.
- In the discussion section you present a diagram to facilitate result interpretation. The way how this diagram was built is not clear to me. If it is the output of the integration of quantitative with qualitative findings, you should say that in the methods section. If it shows researcher synthesis, you should say how the diagram was built in the discussion sections. Anyways, that diagram could be a good way either to conclude the results section or to begin the discussion section (not to conclude it).
- In the discussion section you present several implications of your study. I suggest grouping them together in a dedicated section or subsection.
- The conclusions section is not clear to me. In my opinion, this section should focus on the key message of your research. I suggest showing the key findings of the study first (e.g. those presented at the end of the discussions) and then giving policy recommendations based on those findings.
Minor comments involve the language. I think English is ok, but there are some odd or unnatural expressions here and there that should be corrected.
For example, special farming (do you mean IPM= integrated pest management?), eco-farming (low-input farming?), “The application of ECA for sustainable farming is very ideal” (not clear to me).
Author Response
Thank you very much for your valuable comments. We have tried to address all your points which is to be found in the attached file herealong. We believe your comments have helped us to improve the paper. We would be more than glad to get further comments if any to make the paper more robust.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The study focuses on the relevant topic of conservation agriculture in a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System. Therefore, the study topic is relevant. I find the study very data rich, which is an asset but also one of the main concerns about the manuscript in its current shape. I hve the following remarks for authors to consider:
1) The aim of the paper needs to be stated in a more focused and sharp manner. Curently it is not clear enough why it is important to know how farmers perceive their farming method. Please clarify this.
2) There are some controversies in the introduction. While it is mentioned that Toki branding enabled farmers to gain a reasonable profit for their harvest ; and that rice produced in fields that provide habitat to birds has the highest price among rice brands that are produced in coexistence with living creatures (lines 143-146), it is also mentioned that farmers face low prices for agricultural products (line 157). Please see that the challenges presented are in line with the context of the specific study area.
3) The study lacks theoretical and conceptual foundations. There is no explanations about the reasoning behind the contents of questionnaire, there are no specific research questions and/or propositions and/or hypotheses. It's not clear why authors include all these variables in the regression models. What are the questions that these models should help to answer for? I would expect auhtors to add this information and also reconsider the presentation of the results accordingly.
4) On lines 240-242 authors claim that higher yield is obtained from smaller areas. However, there is no convincing data to support this. Table S1 does not present any correlation between land and yield.
5) I find problematic authors interpretation of cognitive dissonance relted to ECA and climate change. I think it is highly logical and expected that farmers who apply ECA e.g. on their 5 ha of land does not notice how applying these practices affect climate change. Applying ECA takes place at very local micro level while climate change is a global phenomenon. Therefore, I would not go as far as to call this a cognitive dissonance. Quite the opposite, it would be very unexpected if one notices how his or her micro level activities change climate.
6) Authors need to explain on the basis of what reasoning the explanatory variables were seleted for the regression analyses. Also, it is not entirely clear what is the scale of these variables. Are most of them measured in Yes/No (1; 0) scale? Also, please clarify if the analysis of ECA continuation includes only these farmers who practice ECA. It appears that not all respondents apply ECA.
7) In Table 2 the variables are defined slightly differently that in Table S2. Please check tha all the variables are defined the same way throughought the study.
8) The authors presen some statements on lines 311-317. How these statements were collected and did you apply any methos of qualitative analysis in this study?
9) Figure 2 is confusing. There are 6 regions but 5 region 'levels', similarly there are 6 yield ranges but on the figure there are 5 yield 'levels'. If you look at the figure in more details, then 6000 kg/ha and 4800-5400 kg/ha are presented at the same yield 'level'(0.5). Therefore, it's not very clear what this Figure is trying to express.
I hope that aauthors can address these shortcomings to clarify othervise interesting manuscript.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your valuable comments. We have tried to address all your points which is to be found in the attached file herealong. We believe your comments have helped us to improve the paper. We would be more than glad to get further comments if any to make the paper more robust.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript “Factors influencing environmental conservation agriculture (ECA) continuation in Sado Island, Niigata Prefecture, Japan” deal with attempts/the factors affecting ECA continuation in a chosen part of Japan (Sado Island, Niigata prefecture in Japan) like a globally important agricultural heritage system (GIAHS) and an area with high ECA adoption.
Japanese agriculture was famous all the world for the high expenditure/income per hectare. Japan’s initiatives to promote sustainable farming began in the early 1990s, with various prefectures implementing ecologically friendly farming practices in the early 2000s, such as Niigata and Ishikawa which are both GIAHS sites, a given direction of change in agriculture today.
The reviewed manuscript has a clear structure, with the methods and aims described very well.
Discussion of literature sufficient. The literature is accurate and current.
Overall, the text reads well, with an interest in the scientific problem which is presented.
Some specific comments:
214, 216: (Table S1, S2), and so on – it is not in the text;
529-531: Supplementary Materials: Table S1: Socio-demographic characteristics of the sampled farmers in 529 Sado Island, Japan; Table S2: ECA-related and climate change-related factors of farmers in Sado 530 Island, Japan.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your valuable comments. We have tried to address all your points which is to be found in the attached file herealong. We believe your comments have helped us to improve the paper. We would be more than glad to get further comments if any to make the paper more robust.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
I acknowledge ms improvement.
By comparing the revised ms with your response to reviewers, I am not sure if you highlighted all the changes made to the original submission. But this could be my perception.
My suggestions to improve this new submission are as follows:
1. To simplify wording for the expression “factors influencing ECA continuation” (including title revision).
After re-reading the ms, I have the impression that the expression “factors influencing ECA continuation” should be simplified, being repeated many times across the ms (including the title). How about “drivers” or any other similar word that you like better? After defining what’s a “driver” in the context of this study, then you can simplify the rest of the text.
Title: I suggest removing the acronym and simplifying the text.
2. To have a section dedicated to methods and data only, where all the necessary explanations are provided to enable a complete understanding of the research and the related findings
3. To add a case study section, thereby simplifying and synthesising the introduction, methods and results sections
4. To remove all the irrelevant information from the results section.
Points 2., 3., 4. are interdependent.
Compared to the first submission, the methods and data section has not improved, and the description of the case study is still not clearly concentrated in a single section, with part of information being presented in section 1, part in section 2 and part in section 3 (sub-section 3.1… in the results section!). The description of methods and data in the dedicated section is limited to the presentation of the sampling strategy and questionnaire design + 5 lines (214-219) for the empirical methods. Information about the research method is still dispersed across the ms (see previous peer review comments). In the new ms draft, the text about data included in the results section is even increased. The results should show how you achieved the aim of the study, currently stated at lines 123-124, so data used to achieve that aim should be removed from the results section. This will improve the readability of the results section as well. The research design is still not clear to me: do you focus just on quantitative findings, or you aim at integrating qualitative + quantitative information? More explanation is needed to clarify this point in the section dedicated to methods.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comments. We have addressed them in the attahced file for your perusal.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for revising the manuscript. I still have some questions from the first review that in my opinion were not sufficiently addressed by the authors. Also, there are some further clarifications needed.
Please check and if needed revise the percentage calculations in Table 2. If there are 242 farmers who are willing to continue practicing ECA methods and 135 of them mention that it helps to build trust with consumers, then it is 55.8% of those who are willing to continue not 48.4% as indicated. The reasons for continuation should be studied only in case of those who are willing to continue.
Please clarify in the Table 2 the category ‘Reasons for expanding towards ECA’. As I understand, all the responded farmers are ECA farmers. In this case, how should the reader interpret the expansion towards ECA?
Similarly, in Table 2 under the category ‘Farmers’ wish for farming’ please explain how to interpret the lines ‘Area no change, towards ECA’ and ‘Will expand current farming to ECA’. I assume that all 279 respondents are already ECA farmers.
On lines 277-279 authors claim that higher yield is obtained from smaller areas. However, there is no convincing data to support this. Please provide at least correlation analysis of more in-depth data of the average yields or yield distributions per each farm area class. Current explanation provided by the authors is unfortunately not convincing.
Please clarify the scale of the dependent variable (ECA continuation) in the ordinal logistic regression. What values were given for each answering option?
In the analysis of the effects of socio-demographic and ECA/GIAHS factors to ECA continuations the authors used logistic regression (not ordinal logistic regression) as above. Please explain why two different estimation methods were used in case of the same dependent variable?
Please clarify what was the dependent variable in the regression model which results are presented in the Table 6.
I still find Figure 2 confusing and not informative. If the aim is to present paddy yields of different regions, a presentation of simple averages per region would be much clearer.
The study still lacks theoretical and conceptual foundations. There are no explanations about the reasoning behind the contents of questionnaire, there are no specific research questions and/or propositions and/or hypotheses. It's not clear why authors include all these variables in the regression models. I’d suggest the authors add some theoretical and conceptual elements of farmers’ decision making in the introduction.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comments. We have addressed them in the attahced file for your perusal.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
dear Authors
I think the ms can be published
