Qualitative Cost-Benefit Analysis of Using Pesticidal Plants in Smallholder Crop Protection
, Patrick A. Ndakidemi 1 and Steven R. Belmain 5Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The study is interesting and can gain significant attention. I would read more about what to do and how to do in order to help smallholders with using more pesticidal plants. This is a more sustainable way of production. Besides, I missed one thing: why crop rotation is not on the table? This is one of the most effective way of fighting against certain pests. Or the authors mixed up crop rotation with intercropping?
Specific comments:
Cost benefit analysis as a keyword is misleading as there are neither costs nor benefits in the study.
line 129. There are 2 "was".
Table 3. Extension services: there are 69 answers.
In some cases, there is an extra space between the words, e.g. line 189.
line 232. generaton.
line 259. pesticida
line 322. Menezes et al., 2017 should be transformed to [40]
Author Response
The comments
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I have reviewed an article entitled “Qualitative cost-benefit analysis of using pesticidal plants in 2 smallholder crop protection”. This article has novelty and according to the scope of the Agriculture.
Particularly, primary data were collected from 77 farmers. Results found that farmers who used synthetics generally did not report the presence of common pest species found in common bean production, whilst farmers who used pesticidal plants were associated with more frequent reports of pest species occurrence.
Farmers expressed overall a positive balance to using pesticidal plants for crop protection and recommended that future investments focus on improving access to tools and education regarding plant processing and extraction to improve uptake of the technology by smallholder farmers.
- Structure of the article should have to add at the end of the introduction.
- The font size of figure 1 must have to increase for its readability.
- Similarly, the font size of figure 2 must have to increase for its readability.
- You have written that “Written notes and audio recordings were transcribed, first in Kiswahili and then to English”. Have you taken a professional language translator to translate Kiswahili into English? If yes, please mention it in the manuscript.
- In table 1, write the percentage values in parenthesis.
- The title of table 2 should not very lengthy. You may write the rest of the information or statement in the footnotes.
- In table 2, write the percentage values in parenthesis.
- line 260. add the period at the end of the sentence.
Author Response
The comments are included in the attached PDF
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
About the submission with the title "Qualitative cost-benefit analysis of using pesticidal plants in smallholder crop protection" I have the following comments:
I suggest a better literature review.
A better explanation about "multiple correspondence analysis" and figure 4 and about the several groups in table 3.
Conclusions section should be improved with main insights, practical implications, policy recommendations and future research.
Author Response
Comments and responses are attached
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
