How to Effectively Enhance Sustainable Livelihoods in Smallholder Systems: A Comparative Study from Western Kenya
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This article describes a case study type project to evaluate the success of a community development project aimed at introducing climate-smart agriculture to enhance farmer incomes. A comparative approach is adopted. It is an interesting study that should fit within the scope of the journal. However a number of amendments to the manuscript is required before I would be happy to recommend it for publication.
Firstly, in places the English needs some polishing. For example in the abstract lines 9 to 12 the sentence is poorly structured - ... evaluating the contributions ...to what exactly? There are a number of similar issues throughout the article. Secondly the authors use the first person throughout (I.e. we, our...). Using the first person places the focus on to the researchers but the purpose of publication is to focus on and disseminate the science. Please depersonalise the text throughout. Please check and address the numerous repetition of certain phrases (e.g. significant positive predictor) as this reduces the manuscripts readability.
The Introduction section needs expanding to properly detail similar studies and to explain why the numerous other studies already published that take a broadly similar approach do not fully satisfy scientific needs - what does this study add to the science base?
Climate smart agriculture is simply a buzz-word which means different things to different farming communities. The authors need to explain exactly what the phrase is in the context of this article. What farming practices have changed and how do these help mitigate climate change?
There is a considerable lack of detail in the methodological description that needs to be addressed. The article needs to explain:
- how were the groups identified, how were participants in the survey selected. What was the criteria? How were the 183 households selected.
- exactly what data was collected
- how was it collected. Was this by open questions (and if so how was the data interpreted) or closed questions etc..
- provide a better explanation of the control group, justification of this approach, limitations of this approach, how were the so called ‘basic characteristics’ selected?
- Line 121 - how was the data ‘cleaned’
This manuscript is submitted to a journal on ‘sustainability’ but it is far from evident that the study has improved sustainability for the farmers involved. Sustainability is not just about improving farm livelihoods but this is the focus of the article and so there is a slight mismatch. This should be addressed in the discussion/conclusion.
Author Response
- English has been proof read.
- Text has been depersonalised throughout.
- Repetitions of phrases, particularly surrounding the ‘significance’ of various factors, have been cleared as much as possible.
- Addressed the question of the study’s contribution to the science base ;
o by addressing the concern that livelihood-enhancing agricultural projects/interventions often do not achieve their objectives because.
o by showing the link between the success in terms of engagement in sustainable livelihood-enhancing processes and the process that is key in identification, promotion and sustainability of these practices.
o by highlighting that context is central to both the selection and promotion of practices, as well as for the success of engagement in these practices.
- Addressed the relation between the ABCD project, CSA and sustainable livelihoods and landscapes more clearly;
o Clearer focus on which practices were promoted and how the engagement process facilitated by the ABCD approach ensured context-suitability and community interest in practices.
o Brief mention of how this might help CC mitigation.
- Precisions in the methodological description;
o About the initial identification of project groups.
o About data collection methods.
o About control group selection and critical discussion.
- Addressed ‘sustainability’ more clearly, as explained above.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper aims at analyzing the efficacy the application of the asset-based community-driven development (ABCD) project in improving farmer resilience through the promotion of community-selected, context-specific climate-smart agricultural practices, including agroforestry in western Kenya. These are the research question proposed by the authors:
1 - How did engagement in context-specific climate-smart agricultural practices affect well-being among project participants?
2 - Which factors determined successful engagement in these climate-smart practices?
3 - In which contexts can ABCD approaches contribute to increase farmer well-being?
The topic and the research question are adequate; by the way, the paper fails in answering these questions.
The paper partially discuss question 1 presenting a long list of farm traits (Table 1) and discussing the difference in the average values in paragraphs 3.1 and 3.2.. By the way, to discuss about how the engagement project may affect well-being needs a presentation of context-specific climate-smart agricultural practices and their impact on farm income. This is missing in the paper. I suggest to avoid the discussion of all variables and to discuss only those affected by the practices introduced by the project.
The research question 2 is not addressed in the paper. This can be addressed by estimating a model explaining the relation between farm characteristics and the participation to the project. A Logit model can be the right approach (there is a huge literature on factors affecting farmers’ adoption of agro-environmental practices).
In paragraph 3.3, a model on farm income (production value) is proposed to address research question 3. The increase of farmer well-being, especially in the case of self-sufficiency role of farm, strongly depend on per-capita income and/or per-hectare. We expect that the availability of land is a fixed factor that a family cannot easily change and consequently the availability of land is the main factor affecting farm income.
Minor comments:
- Figure 1, 2 and 3 are quite hard to read. Is it possible to reproduce it with and higher definition?
- Table 3 should be reproduced using text editor. Variables in the model should be cited in the table using the notation presented in the methodology.
- line 444 and 449. authors cite results that have never been presented in the paper.
Author Response
- Slightly adapted the wording of the research questions to render them more precise – and changed the wording of various sections in the paper to provide a clearer connection between the results, the discussion and the research questions.
- Added explanations about the engagement process that led to the promotion of specific practices and introduced the said practices.
- It was stipulated to avoid discussing all variables and to discuss only those affected by the practices introduced by the project; but we opted to maintain all statistically significant results for at least two reasons:
o Factors included in the survey were based on relevant literature in the field, and the study pursued a comprehensive approach.
o ABCD is about contribution, not necessarily attribution; as well as the presentation of our results. Isolating project effects is neither possible in a truly valid manner, nor the scope of the project, or the study.
- It was stipulated to discuss the farm characteristics and their relation to participation in the project. We believe that this comment is not applicable since project participation was defined as per status (selected as project group by project staff), not practice (actual engagement). The comment revealed that we had not addressed project participation clearly in the methods section, and this was rectified.
- Figures and tables were redone in higher quality
o Please note that the word count went up due to the conversion of the tables from images to text without the actual text having increased as much
- Results that were in lines 444 and 449 that had not been presented previously were deleted from the paper.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
This article describes a case study type project to evaluate the success of a community development project aimed at introducing climate-smart agriculture to enhance farmer incomes. A comparative approach is adopted. It is an interesting study that should fit within the scope of the journal. This is the second time I have reviewed this manuscript and I am pleased to see the authors have addressed all my major concerns and so I am now happy to recommend it for publication. However, please proof read the document a final time.
Reviewer 2 Report
Accept in present form
