Different Stakeholders’ Conceptualizations and Perspectives of Regenerative Agriculture Reveals More Consensus Than Discord

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I believe it is an excellent exploratory article. However, the size of the interview sample is too small. I recommend the authors a few things to publish the manuscript:

1. Explain more details of the sample. The USA is a vast country. Please, explain the exact location of the samples.

2. Please include the interview document as supplementary information.

3. The statistical analysis in the material and methods section is mandatory. Please, do it.

4. Please include a clear conclusion and a future perspective.

5. Authors should be more careful about interpreting the results of the small size of the sample.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

We sincerely thank the reviewers for their attention to our manuscript. We appreciate the time it takes to provide helpful feedback and appreciate their help in improving the manuscript. Based on your feedback, we made the following revisions:

Overarching revisions included:

1. We added to the introduction by including background on alternative movements in agriculture leading up to regenerative agriculture.
2. Revised and added to the methods section to improve clarity. We also added a “limitations” section.
3. We added a conclusing paragraph to underscore dominant themes and articulate a future perspective.
4. We incorporated additional recent scholarship on regenerative agriculture.

Reply review report 1

1. Explain more details of the sample. The USA is a vast country. Please, explain the exact location of the samples.
   1. We added further details about our purposive selection methodology and the participants included while still preserving their anonymity. We added language to the methods section to further clarify our strategy to select participants (purposive selection) and articulate our goals. We added support for our methodology indicating that qualitative research using long-form, semi-structured interviews typically uses sample sizes that are smaller than quantitative studies, as the goal is not to make statistical generalizations.
   2. We also added a limitations section and included the limitations of qualitative sampling strategies and sizes.
2. Please include the interview document as supplementary information.
   1. We are including interview protocols as supplementary information.
3. The statistical analysis in the material and methods section is mandatory. Please, do it.
   1. We are unclear how to understand this particular point. We have chosen to use qualitative methodology, which is particularly appropriate to exploratory studies or when researchers are most interested in questions of why or how. We have reread the submission guidelines which state that materials and methods “should be described with sufficient detail to allow others to replicate and build on published results. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited.” We have worked to strengthen the methods section per reviewer comments but the data we collected using rigorous qualitative methodology does not lend itself to statistical analysis.
4. Please include a clear conclusion and a future perspective.
   1. We added a conclusion section.
5. Authors should be more careful about interpreting the results of the small size of the sample.
   1. We added a limitations section and included the limitations of qualitative sampling strategies and sizes and added language to reiterate that this is qualitative research and thus not statistically significant.

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors elaborated very interesting paper about regenerative agriculture, using high-quality methodology and provided relevant results for research in this area.

However, I have several comments for improvements:

Introduction is very brief and focuses only on regenerative agriculture. I reccommend authors to better conceptualise regenerative agriculture and put into wider perspective. How does regenerative agriculture differs or is similar to conventional, sustainable, precise or organic agriculture? Why is so relevant to invent new term/methods when we have already invented so many types of agriculture? Is it more relevant in present? Does it more reflect adaptation to climate change or why? How doest it reflect CAP?

Result section is very well elaborated and provides interesting information. However, I miss some generalisation and recommendation for future evolution of regenerative farming. Which finding authors found the most relevant?

The manuscript end with Discussion. I do not see any Conclusion. I also recommend author to add the newest papers  (2021, 2022) dealing with regenerative agriculture which are missing.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

We sincerely thank the reviewers for their attention to our manuscript. We appreciate the time it takes to provide helpful feedback and appreciate their help in improving the manuscript. Based on your feedback, we made the following revisions:

Overarching revisions included:

1. We added to the introduction by including background on alternative movements in agriculture leading up to regenerative agriculture.
2. Revised and added to the methods section to improve clarity. We also added a “limitations” section.
3. We added a conclusing paragraph to underscore dominant themes and articulate a future perspective.
4. We incorporated additional recent scholarship on regenerative agriculture.

Reply review report 2

1. Introduction is very brief and focuses only on regenerative agriculture. I recommend authors to better conceptualize regenerative agriculture and put into wider perspective.
   1. We added a background section to the introduction to provide more background on the context which regenerative agriculture has emerged.
2. Result section is very well elaborated and provides interesting information. However, I miss some generalization and recommendation for future evolution of regenerative farming. Which finding authors found the most relevant?
   1. We added a conclusions section to highlight these pieces.
3. Add conclusion
   1. We added a conclusions section.
4. Add newest papers (2021, 2022)
   2022. We reviewed recent scholarship and included relevant references through 2022.

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is interesting, and the researched problem has scientific potential. However, some problems need to be solved:

1. The paper does not describe a clear research plan with steps to be followed.

2. Literature review should include more recent sources (2018-2021) and be enriched with relevant references.

3. The paper does not have defined hypotheses to be tested and validated/invalidated or research questions.

4. The paper is highly descriptive. The analysis of interviews can be deepened with the help of NVivo 12 Pro.

5. In my opinion, a section of conclusions that includes theoretical and managerial implications, along with research limitations and future research directions, would be helpful.

The article can be published after carefully reviewing the reported issues.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

We sincerely thank the reviewers for their attention to our manuscript. We appreciate the time it takes to provide helpful feedback and appreciate their help in improving the manuscript. Based on your feedback, we made the following revisions:

Overarching revisions included:

1. We added to the introduction by including background on alternative movements in agriculture leading up to regenerative agriculture.
2. Revised and added to the methods section to improve clarity. We also added a “limitations” section.
3. We added a concluding paragraph to underscore dominant themes and articulate a future perspective.
4. We incorporated additional recent scholarship on regenerative agriculture.

Reply review report 3

1. The paper does not describe a clear research plan with steps to be followed.
   1. We added to the methods section to clarify our research steps.
2. Literature review should include more recent sources (2018-2021) and be enriched with relevant references.
   2022. We reviewed recent scholarship and included relevant references through 2022.
3. The paper does not have defined hypotheses to be tested and validated/invalidated or research questions.
   1. This is an exploratory qualitative paper and we clarified our objectives in the introduction and methods sections. Qualitative methods are particularly appropriate to research examining questions of why or how. As such, we are not trying to validate or invalidate any hypothesis. Instead, we sought to broaden our understanding of regenerative agriculture by talking to stakeholders using the term.
4. The paper is highly descriptive. The analysis of interviews can be deepened with the help of NVivo 12 Pro.
   1. We used NVivo 12 Pro to facilitate all analyses. We have added clarifications of our coding iteration to the Methods section. We are unclear on what types of other advanced analyses available in NVivo 12 that would change or deepen our findings.
5. In my opinion, a section of conclusions that includes theoretical and managerial implications, along with research limitations and future research directions, would be helpful.
   1. We added a conclusions section.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper can be publised in current form. 

Author Response

Thank you again for your time reviewing this article a second time. We appreciate your editing and feedback, which has helped us improve this article. 

We have gone through and accepted all suggested edits.