Transforming Food Systems in Africa under Climate Change Pressure: Role of Climate-Smart Agriculture
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thanks to the authors of the paper you produced! Overall, it is an interesting read and the raised topic is of great importance.
Here are some minor comments:
Line 54 - 58 text seems repetitive of the abstract, maybe some other information additionally can be presented in this paragraph.
Line 103 – the Covid pandemic could double the number of people at risk of suffering acute hunger. Where did this estimation come from?
Acronym FMNR must be explained.
Minor editing mistakes as in 285 – farmers should be written with a capital letter.
It would be very insightful if you could add a first chapter in the result section where you give a bit statistics about the current state of agriculture in Africa (and what are the parts most sensitive to climate change) thus giving the reader better background information.
Additionally, after conducting such research, maybe you can speculate a bit what kind of improvements in the agricultural systems in Africa would be the most cost efficient – meaning what small changes would give the most benefits.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
General comments
The review paper is exciting but a bit disjointed. The article discussed some examples but failed to justify how CSA contributes to a rapid transformation of Africa's agriculture and the food system as stated in the title and objective(s). How can this be adopted in similar geographical regions in other parts of the world? Examples use as a part of CSA agriculture in this paper is very similar to those use in traditional agriculture. So, my big concern is in the novelty of the research idea in this review. Also, in multiple places, the authors are very judgmental rather than using facts and scientific publications to support their writings. For instance, they have mentioned the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact with speculation without providing facts and using published papers related to COVID-19 and how it will impact the current ag systems. Another major flaw of the article is not differentiating the CSA technologies & traditional agriculture? For example, All the CSA (such as intercropping, crop rotation, contour farming, use of climate information) listed herein in Table 1 are commonly used and have been used as part of agriculture for since long. So, what are the criteria to classify them as CSA? Readers will have a hard time understanding the difference. There are sentences unnecessarily bolded throughout. Please follow the MDPI author's guidelines.
Specific comments
Abstract
Line 18-20: Rewrite this sentence to clarify—this difficult to understand.
Line 20-26: Very long and complicated sentence. Please split and simplify it. Difficult to understand
Line 36: CGIAR/CCAFS - Write these in full form of these especially when you are using abbreviations for the first time
- Introductions
Line 46: Explain this more. How the warmer temperature would be disastrous to food systems ?.
Line 48: Provide a reference here.
Line 49- 52: Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic might have impacted more. But are there any publications to support your claim even more? If yes, by how much? Please be careful to draw your conclusion on such matters without proper reference.
Line 66: CGIAR? Provide the full form
- Results and Discussions
Lines 103-104: Provide reference(s) rather than just creating your sentence and speculation.
Lines 106-107: Provide reference(s)
Lines 124-128: Rewrite the whole sentence. It's too complex and challenging.
Line 147: Explain ACRE?
Line 148: Explain R4 in more detail and M-PESA. What those words stand for?
Line 165: Are there any other similar types of examples available? If yes, provide more examples.
Line 181: Explain more about WAICSA. Can that can be replicated in other areas? Discuss its applicability.
Lined 197-199: Rewrite and simplify this sentence.
Lined 200-203: Rewrite and simplify this sentence. Throughout the paper, there are long sentences. Please consider simplifying them all.
Line 216: Table 1. What is the difference between adopted CSA technologies & traditional agriculture? For example, All the CSA (such as intercropping, crop rotation, contour farming, and climate information) listed herein in Table 1 are commonly used and used as part of agriculture for since long. So, what are the criteria to classify them as CSA? Readers will have a hard time understanding the difference. Please specify and clarify.
Line 240: How can someone correlate the % without providing further statistics. For example, how can you say the drought-tolerant varieties and micro-dosing are positively correlated with the % presented in the table?
Line 257: Table 3. Is this on Percentage again or what? Please specify that the readers and reviewers do not have to check the original article(s).
Line 271-275: Please explain how and why the seasonal forecast helped to gain more yield? The listed yield is significant? Is it possible to increase that much yield just with the seasonal forecast? Also, was the increased yield compared to traditional agriculture? Or what. Explain.
Line 279: Reformat table so that the headings are well separated.
Lines 288-295: The whole paragraph did not align well and connect with the discussion. Not sure what the authors are trying to highlight with this?
Line Lines 303-305: Explain how this decision making is related to the climate information? Are you saying using more fertilizers than organic manure helped in sesame production? Please clarify.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
In general, this review paper is very poorly written. It must be altered and corrected substantially in order to get published. The objective is not clearly stated and the results one is looking forward to are, thus not easily found. The authors should clearly state that they are focusing on CGIAR/CCAFS projects and then state the guidelines which are already in place. Those are not findings. Their findings, which are assessments of ground projects in the backdrop of these guidelines need to be detailed and showcased in results in unambiguous terms. Also, the methodology of study selection, literature review and analysis procedures etc, need to be state clearly in the methods section. Information of all studies used in this review should be tabulated and detailed. Also how CSA can contribute to a rapid transformation of agriculture and food systems in Africa , needs to be explained in a section , comparing to non CSA, which only leads to very slow transformation, if at all any needs to be discussed contextually or in a separate paragraph. Also, language needs to be corrected in many places.
Title- correct grammatically.
Suggested- Transforming food systems in Africa under climate change pressure– role of Climate-Smart Agriculture
Abstract:
Line 13- adaptive institutions?
Please correct first sentence grammatically.
Line 18- 19- What is the basis for selecting ‘concrete ground work’?
Line 21- ‘in the African context of are (1) the climate-smart village approach to generate knowledge on cli- 2
Line 24- Not ‘where instrumental’- but were
Line 26-28- “The four interlocking areas include: i) Reroute farming and rural livelihoods to new trajectories; ii) De-Risk livelihoods, farms and value chains, iii) Reduce emissions 27 through diets and value chains and iv) Realign policies, finance, support to social movements, and innovation “---- This is already proposed by CGIAR. Please present in the abstract specific from each of these areas which you came across in your examples from ground in Africa.
Line 29-30 –‘The review showed that it is possible to transform food systems in Africa, provided sound mechanisms and enabling conditions are followed;’- This is not explicitly shown in this manuscript . What sound mechanism and enabling conditions are being referred to ?
Line -30-31-“and CSA can play a key role in driving the change through the implementation of the 3 pillars-productivity/adaptation/mitigation” ---- very general comment, please put some pointed results.
Please mention in abstract that you are focusing on projects of CGIAR/CCAFS and partners and the names of the countries (and the regions) from where you have chosen your projects
Methods:
Where is the methodology? What are the strategies used for analysis? What literature was reviewed? What search words were used? How was the work on ground selected? What are the criteria for inclusion and exclusion of groundwork in this study?
Results and Discussions:
Please make a table for all the studies from the ground you have used, the year, the author, the country, funding/managing organization, and main details. This will make it easy to refer to the studies.
Line 99- fare, should be far
Line 120: Why part of sentence is in bold? Many sentences are bold in the manuscript. This is not the right format, please change text in bold to normal.
Line 121: Define carbon rich landscape
Line 146-147: ‘Bundling index insurance with agricultural credit and farm inputs’- Explain the details as to how this strategy was helpful.
Line 148: M-PESA: Expand
Line 155-REDUCE emissions from diets and value chains, targeting health and climate outcomes…. Please explain how cutting down food loss is related to lowering emissions. Also outline some other strategies for cutting down emissions from diets and value chains.
Line 168 REALIGN….please give few more examples other than WAICSA
Line 184: “Generating knowledge on CSA technologies and practices for their scaling”….should read scaling up/out instead . Please correct in other places too.
Line 207: 10 are located across East and West Africa [23]---- Please name them
Line 260: “Using climate information services to build resilience”--- I could not understand why the effect was different in males vs females? Please explain . Also, explain why the effect is different on different crops? Which crops are more climate hardy hence needing less reliance of farmer on Climate information services.
Line 284: Why does seasonal forecast affects men and women differently? Explain
Line 285: Capitalize F in farmers
Table 2: Expand FMNR, CIS
Fig 1: Increase font size in figure.
Line 338 : “to at least 1.2 million small-scale farmers. “….What timeline?
Conclusions:
Line 399: “sound mechanisms and enabling conditions are followed”….. What are these? Please state unambiguously and explain in Results and discussions section
Line 404: “of the 3 pillars-productivity/adaptation/mitigation. In this perspective, researchers must”….this is not clearly explained in text
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have addressed all the concerns that I have raised adequately. Hence, I am satisfied with the responses.
Author Response
Authors response to reviewer 2 comments:
Reviewer 2 has no further comments. The authors are thankful to Reviewer 2 for the earlier comments, which were relevant and helpful to us in order to improve the manuscript.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you so much for all the corrections. Very good job!
Here are some minor edits , please update.
- Line 21- expand CGIAR the first time
- Line 22- expand CCFAS
- Line 42-Keywords: add Africa, CGIAR
- Line 53- “According to” - name the reference [2]
- Table 1- Expand IFAD, IBLT-IBLRI, ECOWAS, ABC
- Line 164-what is the appropriate framework and the action areas?
- Line 438, 439- crop specialization by gender
Author Response
Authors response to reviewer 3 comments:
The authors are thankful to reviewer 3 for the earlier comments, which helped us a lot to improve the manuscript.
- Line 21- expand CGIAR the first time
- Response: We have now expanded CGIAR which is the former Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
- Line 22- expand CCFAS
- Response: we have now expanded the acronym CCAFS (Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security)
- Line 42-Keywords: add Africa, CGIAR
- Response: thanks for the suggestions which are now added as key words
- Line 53- “According to” - name the reference [2]
- Response: we have added the authors names (Loboguerrero et al.)
- Table 1- Expand IFAD, IBLT-IBLRI, ECOWAS, ABC
- Response: we have now spelt out all the above acronyms
- Line 164-what is the appropriate framework and the action areas?
- Response: we have now revised the sentence accordingly, i.e. "Reconfiguring food systems in Africa: what is the appropriate framework and the relevant action areas?"
- Line 438, 439- crop specialization by gender
- Response: we have replaced "by sex" with "by gender"
