What Determines the Uptake of Multiple Tools to Mitigate Agricultural Risks among Hybrid Maize Growers in Pakistan? Findings from Field-Level Data

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments_Agriculture-1253906: What determines the uptake of multiple tools to mitigate agricultural risks among hybrid maize growers in Pakistan? Implications for climate change adaptation

Recommendation: MINOR Revisions

The subject paper is a nice effort to evaluate drivers of risk mitigation tools. The message and idea of the paper are appealing and structured appropriately. The language of the paper needs some sort of improvement, however.

Title: It needs a revisit as the 2nd part of the title has a mismatch with first one. The 2nd part can be ‘Insights from a field survey’ Or ‘an empirical evidence from field-level data’ etc.

Introduction: It is well-presented and coherently developed if some typos or grammatical mistakes are handled with just a thorough read by the authors.

Methods: It would be appropriate to use a map of the study area with some explanation of the survey instrument. There is no caption to the figure appearing under risk perception, although removing this would also suffice as not much value is being added by this figure.

Results and Discussion: The heading seems different from the others. Overall, results are well-presented with fewer than required implications or discussion. While illuminating the significance of variable ‘access to information’, recent and relevant study by Ullah et al. 2020 should be cited to make the argument strong.

The section on implications for climate change adaptation need further enrichment with some regional studies.

Author Response

See attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors' study of the factors that contribute to farmer decision-making around risk management activities is an important one. It is crucial to understand why farmers make risk management decisions in order to better provide farmers with the information they need to reduce risk. Reducing risk to farmers also has consequences for risk to regional and national food security. 

Overall, I believe the authors' approach seems reasonable, however I do not believe my knowledge of statistical models is sufficient to comment in depth on the methodology. Therefore, I will offer the authors some suggestions regarding the presentation of the manuscript contents and will defer to the other reviewers and journal editors to assess the methodological approach in detail. I have noted this in comments to the editors as well, but want to make the authors aware of why this review lacks comments on the methodology. 

My first overall comment to the authors is to revisit the language style of the manuscript. The writing style and command of the English language style required by the journal varies between paragraphs. For example the style of the first two paragraphs is notably different from those that follow. Likewise, there are a few other paragraphs throughout with a different style (and fewer grammatical errors). This is not to critique the science at all or the writing overall, just to say that the readability of the manuscript could be improved by an edit to make the writing more seamless. 

The last two paragraphs of the introduction section (lines 106-118) could be organized into a single paragraph and some repetition reduced. It would be beneficial to note that the factors laid out in lines 106-108 are the "traditional risk management" strategies. 

It may be useful for readers and other scholars wishing to replicate this study for the authors to publish the farmer interview questions (referenced in line 129) as supplemental materials. I don't see this as a requirement for publication, but merely a suggestion of useful material if the journal allows for supplementals. 

In line 126 there is a reference for Figure 2, but there is no figure in the manuscript. Additionally, if there is a Figure 1, that does not appear in the manuscript and does not appear referenced in the text. 

Line 162, what does MN stand for? Please define acronyms and then put acronym in parentheses after first definition. 

Given the diverse readership of the journal, the authors should include some references for the SML and GHK methods (lines 164-165). Ideally, there would be a reference that describes what these methods are and an example of how they have been used in other studies. If the use of these methods in the way they are applied here is novel, that should be indicated.

Line 178, define the ELCE outside of the parentheses and put the acronym inside parentheses. 

Line 181, "monetary"

Line 202-204, The authors state that the farmer risk behavior is contained within the analysis as 1 if the farmer is risk averse, and is 0 otherwise. This means that the behavior is classed as 1 even if the farmer is a "risk lover" ?

Lines 243-245, The wording is confusing. Do the authors mean that education, experience, farm size, and access to extension sources have a positive impact that is not statistically significant? Or that all are positive except extension contact? Please revisit this sentence and clarify. 

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Abstract is not self-explanatory. Data about results and policy implication are not clear in the abstract.

Introduction: lines 90 – 91 the crop loan insurance system is not clearly presented;

It is not totally clear why the authors used in the study only contract farming, income diversification and agricultural credit as risk management tools. They argue in the introduction part that risk management tools are used together by farmers. Such an approach can bring to bias results.

Material and methods:

Line 121 to 129 – the sampling procedure is not clear. Are the data representative for Pakistan? The questionnaire is not described;

Discussions: the authors fail to discuss the main important findings of the study and the implications of these findings for the policy makers.

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors properly address the main issues identified in the first review process. Nevertheless it is still not clear what was the sampling procedure for establishing the sampling size.

Author Response

Please see attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx