Labour Commutation in the Agricultural Sector—An Analysis of Agricultural Workers in Chile

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic of the work carried out is very interesting and well presented; my main concern is that there seems to be no consideration, especially in the part relating to the final comments, on the possible impact of the new scenarios for the agricultural sector. In particular, market volatility and climate change will certainly impact on production specialization and on the resilience of world agricultural systems; consequently, this eventuality will also impact on agricultural work. How exposed will be Chile to these scenarios? It would also be important to better present the agronomic and economic differences from the agricultural point of view of the areas considered for the empirical analysis. Lastly, I would expect more emphasis on the limits of the empirical analysis carried out.

For this aims, I would suggest to consider as references the following article:

De Castro P., Adinolfi F., Capitanio F., Di Falco S., Di Mambro A., “The Politics of Land and Food Scarcity”, Book Edited by Routledge – Earthscan, Taylor & Francis Group Ltd, Oxford (Uk), 2012. ISBN 9780415638241

Lacirignola C., Adinolfi F., Capitanio F., "Food security in the Mediterranean countries", New Medit, Vol.14, No. 4 December 2015, pp. 2-10.

Chavas, J.-P., Rivieccio, G., Di Falco, S., De Luca, G., & Capitano, F. (2022). Agricultural diversification, productivity, and food security across time and space. Agricultural Economics, 00, 1– 18. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12742.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

We appreciate your comments, as they allowed us to extend our conclusions and associated implications, as well as to incorporate a better description of the 5 zones.

We integrated in the challenges in the agricultural sector, such as the price volatility of agricultural products and the effects of climate change. Also, we incorporated your suggested references (We are grateful for them).

Additionally, within the manuscript, we incorporated table 1, figures 3 and 4, allowing us to include agrarian and economic descriptions of the five areas studied.

Furthermore, we have extended the limitations of the studies.

Finally, we sent the manuscript to a proofreading service.

Again, we welcome your feedback.

Reviewer 2 Report

When the probability model is used, the ratio of dependent variables should be around 20%.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer.

We appreciate your comment as it allows us to incorporate an explanation within the methodology section.

The value indicated, 20%, is a criterion used – although it is not exhaustive. While in the face of extreme predicted probabilities (close to 0 or 1), using a logit model may be reasonable, the latter is also a criterion.

However, given the uncertainty that the prevalence of the dependent variable may generate and that all estimation methods have limitations, we have used propensity score matching to strengthen our findings.

Thus, in the methodology section, we included the following: ‘Given that the prevalence of the dependent variable may influence estimation of the probabilities, we adopted the propensity score matching method, which is explained below’.

Again, we welcome your comment.

Reviewer 3 Report

The submitted paper is well written and understandable. The topic under the investigation is relevant to be published. Agricultural labor market is rather specific and its character is different country by country. The paper itself is not really innovative, but its content is interesting and attractive for publishing. The only weakness of proposed paper is its very limited results discussion. Individual results are not discussed in deep. Also final conclusion is too brief. Also limitations should be discussed more in deep. It would be also interesting to explain for whom the paper's conclusions and findings could be interesting and why. The paper could be considered for publishing after minor corrections.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

We are grateful for your comments, as they allowed us to extend our conclusions and associated implications.

We have elaborated on the work's limitations and the challenges involved.

Furthermore, we briefly augmented the results (section 4.2) concerning the implication of having different impacts (sign and magnitude) on the variables. This also affects the conclusions of the study.

Finally, we have highlighted policy institutions that could use these results.

Again, we welcome your feedback.