Does Traditional Agroforestry a Sustainable Production System in Bangladesh? An Analysis of Socioeconomic and Ecological Perspectives

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper brings research results in assessment of the economic, social and environmental outcomes of two important traditional agroforestry systems in Bangladesh.

The focus of the paper suits to a scope of the journal.

The structure of the paper follows a structure of a scientific paper. Methods and methodology should be more precise. Assessment of economic aspects has cardinal defaults.

My comments for improvement of the paper are as follows:

1. Material and methods: methods are described unsufficiently:

• structure (questions) of questionnaire, interview and discussion should be written, so the results could be understandable
• table 1 : what is “upazilla”? Is it English?
• Line 177: repeated conservations were made with farmers? What kind of conservation?
• Line 195: What is “Gross benefit”? Well known and reputable economic indicators measuring profitability or other economic results are in the literature. If you assess profitability (as you claim in line 258), use profitability indicators.

2. Results, part 3.1

• Table 3.1: what is “wage labor”; costs are inputs in agrofarm, not output; income is an economic output, not input; it is unclear what data are in table 3: per 1 farm or?, per one year or?.
• Economic part must be reworked, it includes a lot of faults and inaccurate economic terminology.

3. Results, part 3.3: the graph is insufficient to analyze results
4. Results, part 3.4: what values are in table 5 – average? mean?
5. Conclusions: highlight contribution of the paper and achieved results to scientific knowledge in the solved field. Give limitations of provided research and directions of the future research.

Author Response

Dear Respected Reviewer

First of all, we would like to express our sincere thanks for your time and great efforts in reviewing our manuscript. Your valuable comments/suggestions certainly help to improve the quality of our manuscript. Following reviewer comments, we significantly revised and rewrote the manuscript, and please see our revision in the different color text in track change option of the revised manuscript.

Reviewer #1

Comments: 

1. Material and methods: methods are described insufficiently:

• structure (questions) of questionnaire, interview and discussion should be written, so the results could be understandable
• table 1: what is “upazilla”? Is it English?
• Line 177: repeated conservations were made with farmers? What kind of conservation?
• Line 195: What is “Gross benefit”? Well known and reputable economic indicators measuring profitability or other economic results are in the literature. If you assess profitability (as you claim in line 258), use profitability indicators.

Reply Responses

We do agree with reviewer and carefully revised the methodology. In our revised manuscript we elaborately described the structure of the questionnaire and their contents (Please Lines 164 to 178 for details).

We are extremely sorry not explain the term Upazilla, it is the lowest administrative unit of Bangladesh local government, we included the explanation in the text as well.

Again, we are sorry to make a typing mistakes, it was conversation not conservation. We revised the text as well.  

We also revised all economic terms, gross income is another word of total income of a farm, many scientists use the term, however, we revised the term into total income, please see the revised manuscript.

1. Results, part 3.1

• Table 3.1: what is “wage labor”; costs are inputs in agrofarm, not output; income is an economic output, not input; it is unclear what data are in table 3: per 1 farm or?, per one year or?.
• Economic part must be reworked, it includes a lot of faults and inaccurate economic terminology.

Reply Responses

We are really sorry for using some local terms and mistakes, we revised all areas and carefully input the terms inputs and outputs. The average farm income is presented in the table 3 in annual basis, I mean average annual income.  

1. Results, part 3.3: the graph is insufficient to analyze results

Reply Responses

Thank you for the good comments and we do agree with reviewer. We revised the figure and input the axis information to make the graph as self-explanatory.

1. Results, part 3.4: what values are in table 5 – average? mean?

Reply Responses

Thank you for good observation. The values in the Table 5 are average ratings of the farmers and it was collected from the HH interview and Focus group discussion. Please see the Line 314 for details.

1. Conclusions: highlight contribution of the paper and achieved results to scientific knowledge in the solved field. Give limitations of provided research and directions of the future research.

Reply Responses

We do agree with reviewer and revise the conclusion section with the limitation and future direction of the study. Please see the revised version of the manuscript.  

Thanking you again.

Sincerely,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The objective of the study was to assess the economic, social and environmental outcomes of two important traditional agroforestry systems (TAS) in Bangladesh.

Taking up this topic is especially important in the context of the economy of Bangladesh, where there is only 0.06 ha of arable land per capita.

In order to understand whether the traditional agroforestry systems are sustainable or not, the study gathered ideas from the triangular sustainable model of economic, social and ecological dimensions.

It is worth answering the question of how to balance economic, social and environmental goals? Should any of these objectives be a priority in the present socio-economic conditions?

Directions for future research should be indicated.

Author Response

Dear Respected Reviewer

First of all, we would like to express our sincere thanks for your time and great efforts in reviewing our manuscript. Your valuable comments/suggestions certainly help to improve the quality of our manuscript. Following reviewer comments, we significantly revised and rewrote the manuscript, and please see our revision in the different color text in track change option of the revised manuscript.

Reviewer #2

Comments

The objective of the study was to assess the economic, social and environmental outcomes of two important traditional agroforestry systems (TAS) in Bangladesh.

Taking up this topic is especially important in the context of the economy of Bangladesh, where there is only 0.06 ha of arable land per capita.

In order to understand whether the traditional agroforestry systems are sustainable or not, the study gathered ideas from the triangular sustainable model of economic, social and ecological dimensions.

It is worth answering the question of how to balance economic, social and environmental goals? Should any of these objectives be a priority in the present socio-economic conditions?

Directions for future research should be indicated.

Reply Responses:

Thank you for your good observations and comments. The manuscript is focusing economic, social and ecological dimension of the traditional agroforestry practices in Bangladesh, and if we look at the whole results our main focused is the economic outputs of the systems. As economic outputs are the main contributor to enhanced farmers livelihood and improve the local context in line with socio-ecological aspect.

We revised the conclusion and included future directions as well, please see the revised manuscript.

Thanking you again.

Sincerely,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.