The Impact of Government Agricultural Development Support on Agricultural Income, Production and Food Security of Beneficiary Small-Scale Farmers in South Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper focus on the impact of agricultural support received on the farmers’ food production, agricultural income and food security status in South Africa. Overall, this article is not well organized, the method is relatively simple, and the analysis is not sufficient.

1. In the introduction part, too many backgrounds information, however, your research target and plan are not clear. And the background is all about small farm system in Africa, so what about the government development support in this country? I cannot see what are the problems, how you will do, the research area and dataset in the first part.

2. The author should directly declare the contribution related to topic, methodology, or data of the paper in the introduction part.

3. What is the conceptual framework of this article, what is the theoretical analysis, and how to make theoretical connections to government support, agricultural income and food security in the study? I suggest the author make theoretical analysis and build a conceptual framework.

4. Regarding the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) estimation, PSM can solve the endogeneity problem caused by observable variables, but cannot solve the endogeneity problem caused by unobservable variables. This is should be mentioned and using appropriate method to compensate that drawback.

5. The variables used in the estimation should be defined and make descriptive calculation in the table, I did not see clearly that information.

6. When analyzing the determinants of farmers’ access to agricultural development support, the analysis and explanation of influencing factors are not detailed, such as age, race, and the situation of the study area is not well combined, just the analysis of the results.

7. I wonder about the results and policy implication, so why government support improve households’ income, while decrease food security?

Author Response

The paper  have been  re-organised   and we  have tried to  add  a literature  on small-scale farmers and agric support in Africa and at the   international perspective.

We  have made the reduction   in the background information  and included  problems regarding  the  agricultural  development  support .

With  regard  to  PSM, i agree that  PSM does not address the problem  of  Endogeneity  and  we  are aware of the drawback.  However  the PSM attempts to  correct this problem by  ensuring  that the  treatment  group under study  are  balanced with respect  to measure covariates.  Another  technigue that takes care of this problem is  the  Endogenous switching  regression  model , but  is a bit  late to  re-analyse the  data.

The conceptual  and theoritical  analyses of the  study  has been  edited  and the  policy  implication of the study  has been  added  on the conclusion  section.

Reviewer 2 Report

This article put the subject of agricultural income, production, and food security .

I have serious problems with the way the paper has been written, the lack of detail in the theoretical framework, which is needed to more explain. The problem statement is not well described. The problem of research must be explained from different aspects (agricultural income, production, and food security).

In the introduction section, an explanation should be provided about relationship of among agricultural income, production, and especially food security. Furthermore, in the introduction, very old references have been provided. I highly suggest updating the introduction with recent references. You may review the given studies and cite them:

https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063634

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2022.09.006

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jafr.2022.100400

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2022.102349

https://doi.org/10.1080/10371656.2021.1895471

Contribution of the study is not presented clearly. Authors have to describe it from different angles. How is this study different from other researches?

In the conclusion, please provide assumptions by which this study has been established. Research limitations and recommendation for future studies should be presented at the end of the conclusion section.

Author Response

The  paper  has been  re-organised.   We have updated  the introduction  part  with  more recent  references.

The theoritical  framework of the study  have been  explained  in  more detail.

Contribution of the  study  together  with the research  limitations have been  added  on the  conclusion  section.

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a comprehensive study on government support on small scale agriculture in South Africa based on the General Households Surveys. I'm wondering if the survey is conducted by the authors or a national survey conducted by a third party (institution) in South Africa. Can the authors tell more about the selection of sample and validity of data used in study like this. And how can analysis of this dataset contribute to the knowledge of government support and small scale farming. 

The authors are obviously acquainted with small scaling farming in South Africa. But how is small scale farming similar or different from that in other places, for instance, China, can the authors make some comparison? In other words, there isn't enough literature review on the topic of "government support on small scale farmers", which I believe related studies can be found. 

Presentation of some figures is also not very clear. It would be difficult to retrieve enough information or support the statement of the role of gender in small scale farming from the figure after section 3. 

Minor issues include, for instance, figure number (there is not figure 1-7, but figure 8) and the layout of tables. Where is 3.1. 

Author Response

We have updated  more information  on  how the survey was conducted/and how the data was collected.

More figures that  we  missing  have been  added.  and we  have also  added  international  perspective of the issue of  agric development  support.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

1. In the introduction part, I still did not see what exactly are the government development support in your research country.

2. The theoretical framework should not be under the introduction, but should be a separate part. And the framework are failure to build the theoretical connection between government development support and household income.

Author Response

I have added the government  development  support of the country that commenced in  1980  till date in the introduction section.   I have also  removed  the theoritical framework on the introduction section  and put it separately  on  section  2.

Reviewer 3 Report

The revision may address some concerns but It is unclear where the change has been made. There is no highlight throughout the text or response letter. The structure is still not very clear, both in logic and format. There seems no strong connection between the theoretical framework and theoretical model. In other words, the review of market failure seem not the sources of the model construction in 2.3. The paper states that the model is adapted from theory of net farm, then why not introduce it in the framework. I still feel it would be wired to have 1.1 without 1.2 or 1.3 follow after. 

Format shall be revised: abstract, introduction Lack of policy cohesion”, 3.1 Descriptive analysis, author contribution, funding etc. It is not a pleasant reading of the texts. 

Author Response

I have made revisions on the paper using  track  changes and formatted the structure of the paper.

I have re - arranged the  structure of the paper. starting  from  Abstract,  Introduction, materials  and methods,  results and discussion  and the  conclusion. 

I have edited  the theoritical  framework  of the study in order to  connect  with the  theoritical model.