Construction and Interpretation of Production and Market Metrics Used to Understand Relationships with Dietary Diversity of Rural Smallholder Farming Households
, Cédric Gaillard 1,2, Andrew D. Jones 3, Roseline Remans 4 and Gina Kennedy 5,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The review article describes the development of indicators related to agricultural production diversity, market access/participation and dietary diversity at household level and investigates the association between them. The topic is very interested and original.
The authors provide a comprehensive overview of recent advances on topic, presenting a balance view than a simple summary.
The paper also provides in-depth analysis with both qualitative and quantitative content.
The authors should explain in the methodology the type of review used in the paper. They only mentioned that the search was based on previously systematic reviews published by other authors. What about their own review? Is the paper a systematic review or a systematic search and review or a systematized review?
After presenting the type of review used in the methodology, the authors should better describe it and explain the main steps used in the research.
The authors should add additional studies from Europe (including western and eastern countries). For the moment, there is only one study considered from Eastern Europe.
Starting to the above-mentioned observations, the authors should improve the methodology section.
The authors mentioned in the paper the following indexes: Simpson Index, Margalef index, Shannon diversity , Shannon-Wienner index and Shannon evenness. It is recommended to explain all this composite indexes.
It is not clear for what kind of farms are calculated all the indicators used in the paper (related to agricultural production diversity, market access/participation and dietary diversity). All these indicators are applicable to the family farms systems or in general to all types of farms. I am asking this because the authors specify that the indicators related to dietary diversity are at household level.
The results of this review paper should have more practical implication for the scientists and society. Based on the review made, the authors should propose their own standardized set of indicators that measure agricultural production diversity and market access and/or participation that would be the most relevant for studying nutrition-sensitive agriculture.
The conclusions should be more developed.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The Authors presented an interesting paper on research for the relationship between production and market metrics and dietary diversity of smallholder farming households. However, I have some comments:
First of all, the paper should be categorized as a review, not as an article. The Authors mention in the text that they carry out a review.
The paper also lacks a clearly expressed objective.
In my opinion, in order to raise the value of the paper, it would be good to summarize briefly the research found in the elaborations that the Authors have reviewed. Perhaps a table would be a good choice to present the findings. It would satisfy the readers’ curiosity.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is interesting, but it needs to be improved further.
Introduction
L47-53-More studies should be mentioned.
- Description of the studies-The bibliographic review is quite detailed. I like particularly the table and figure synthetizing this review
It would be interesting also to analyse ways of aggregating the indicators, as this is an important problem.
- Conclusions-The conclusion must be improved and developed.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
The subject of the article is interesting and it is linked to the objectives of the journal.
The research is interesting, but, at the end, the affirmation "There is a pressing need to pursue standardization of indicators among the community using indicators of production diversity, market access and/or participation" is really to general, more a platitude than a research finding. The authors are asked to explain how they believe than can be done, based on the results they obtained.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper was significantly improved, according to the reviewers suggestions. Congratulations!
