Economic, Social, and Environmental Factors Impacting Resilience and Disturbances of Lithuanian Family Farms

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Abstract

 

·         Need to include what the novelty of the paper is – why it deserves to be – contribution to knowledge …

·         Line 18 “Qualitative research was conducted using a semi-structured interview.. “ - Qualitative research  is different from an interview- and it is a means of assessing  the data, however “ semi-structured interview” is a means of collecting data- it is 2 different ideas and issues

·          Line 20-  “ …  - in January 2024” send – it does not matter when it is sent – need to include when was the data collection time span – from January 2024- March 2024…. and so on

·         Need to add – conclusion – recommendation, limitation, and further studies abstract

Introduction

·         Line 31- agriculture is not only dealing with staple food- it deals with livestock and others

·         Line 34- the title deals with “ Economic, Social, and Environmental Factors” – why necessary to add ethics and culture  as “ ethnocultural” – need to stick on  the objective and title

·         Lines 65-69 need sources

·         “ family farm “ is different from country to country, as an international journal, needs to define what does mean family farm from Lithuanian perspectives – including  but not limited to land size and so on

·         Line 109 .. “ …..13 indicators….”- need to write the indicators in bracket all of them (13)

·         At the end of the introduction – before the objective of the paper, ---- what the novelty of the paper is – why it deserves to be – contribution to knowledge … is missing – then the policy implication and significance of the paper also missing after the objective

Material and Method

 

The material and method is weak  due to the following reasons:

·         Line 169- “combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods” – what qualitative and quantitative – need to explain in detail the conceptual, theoretical framework and empirical specification of the method

·         Need to explain the sampling size – how they reach the amount 38 groups of questions, was sent by email to 500 randomly selected family farmers on 19 January 2024. The statistical analysis of the data from the 205 duly- in a scientific way -using sample random formula – what is 2022.7 in line 171

·         What is the content of the data is missing

·         Need to include the questionnaires in the appendix

·         Line 182 “ Statistical analysis” – what is the name of  the analyses

·         What software used to do the analysis

·         The study deals with Resilience and Challenges of Family Farms in Lithuania: An In-depth Analysis of Economic, Social, and Environmental Factors—HOWEVER,  THE ARTICULATION OF SECTION 2 not up to standard – considering- how you measure resilience with respect to “Economic, Social, and Environmental Factors”

·         Furthermore, the explanation of Economic indicators  such as (Lack of resources; Unemployment; Price sensitivity; Level of farm debt; Market access; On-farm diversification; Off-farm diversification; Financial safety nets and others missing); environmental indicators ( overgrazing, soil erosion, land degradation, surface and groundwater supply,  land use management practice and other missing )(, social indicators ( labour and other missing)

·         Without incorporating a proper sampling procedure, sampling design, theoretical and empirical framework, empirical specification and others – the paper is not ready to publish

Results and Discussion

·         Per the journal guidance – the result must be separate from the discussion

·         Line 189 “Characteristics of The Surveyed Farms” – what characteristics- socio-economic, institutional???????  Need to specify precisely!

·         Line 189 “ various factors” – need to spiffy as I mentioned in section 2 – economic, social and environmental

·         The result sections lack the policy implications of each findings

·         There is no compare and contrast of the findings from other similar studies – not acceptable

Conclusions

·         Need to include objective.

·         Need to include key findings with key figures!

·         Need to include the contribution of the paper to knowledge (Novelty)

 

·         Need to include limitations of the study and further studies. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

need to improve 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Agriculture

Manuscript Draft

Manuscript Number: 3044469

Title: Resilience and Challenges of Family Farms in Lithuania: An In-depth Analysis of Economic, Social, and Environmental Factors

Article Type: Research article

This manuscript is a good start to understanding the economic, social, and environmental factors that affect the resilience and challenges of Lithuanian family farms. However, the co-authors need to make significant improvements to the manuscript in order for this to be suitable for publication in MDPI Agriculture. I would be willing to review this manuscript after co-authors have made the following TWELVE substantive edits as well as minor line-number specific edits:

1) Please change the title to: Economic, Social, and Environmental Factors Impacting Resilience and Challenges of Lithuanian Family Farms.

2) Please explain in the writing how representative the random sample of 500 farmer was. This should be beyond your opinion (L182) and make a case that this is an adequate number of farmers in the country that were surveyed relative to the entire population of farmers in Lithuania.

3) Please explain in the writing how there may be potential bias in the random sample of 500 farmer. According to the Methods, there were only 205 useable surveys. Why were so many not useable? Please explain in the writing.

4) Please add the actual survey that was used as a Supplementary Materials file so readers can repeat your study elsewhere.

5) Please include a table that describes the data collected that was analyzed.

6) Throughout the manuscript, there are many long tracts of writing between the ½ page to full page range. Please break these up into shorter paragraphs where each paragraph has a topic sentence followed by at least 2 supporting sentences. Examples of this are on p. 5 and p. 6 but are throughout the manuscript. It is not easy to understand if the writing is not organized by paragraphs.

7) For both Table 3 and Table 6, the correlation matrix does not need both halves as the second half is the inverse and is thus repetitive. Please just include half the table.

8) Please clarify if Table 1 and Table 4 are based on the actual survey data collect. If not, then these tables belong in the Methods section of the manuscript.

9) In Table 7, it is not clear what the blue shading and red shading mean. Please clarify this in the figure caption and the writing.

10) a) It is not clear why the analyses did not involve regression analyses. If this had been done then the results would have been much more insightful. For example, one of the regression models analyzed would have been adverse external pressure (whatever data that represents this as dependent variable) as a function of farm size, agricultural production sales, number of family members working on the farm, number of permanent employees, farmer age, farmer education, type of farming, and number of seasonal workers (these would all be specified as independent variables). If this had been done as an OLS model for example, then the marginal impacts of these independent variables on the dependent variable would be specified as the parameters in the model for each independent variable. Please explain why the current analyses is better than regression analysis. It is not clear why this is the case.

b) Please conduct the analyses using statistical regression, making sure to test for heteroscedasticity as well as multicollinearity. If you are just relying on correlation analyses, there is a lack of nuance since for example stating that there is a significant correlation between age and education level (this is not insightful). On pages 12 to 13, you are basically repeating all significant correlations found and making some conjecture as to what explains each individual correlation. What if the correlation is spurious?

11) Please increase the number of citations to around 50 total.

12) For the citations listed in the References that have a page range listed, please follow this by a period and not a comma.

 

Specific Line Number of Manuscript Figure/Table comments (Please note that “…” symbolizes writing that is not changed on either side of the requested edit:

L79 – Add a 3^rd sentence to this end of this paragraph on how the current manuscript addresses this 

L109 – Add space before [17]

L171 – Don’t start a sentence with a number so change to “Seven agricultural exports…”

L171 – What does VMU stand for?

L198 – Change to “Mid-sized farms…”

L227-228 – What do the numbers 73 and 74 correspond to? Percentages? If so, that does not make sense

L263 – Delete what is written about the median value being 0…while that may be true, it is not insightful

L310 – Add blank row after this line

L359 – Delete footnote as it is obvious if this is a table in the results section

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see my comments in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Please see my comments in the attached file.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

·         Even if the authors indicated that “ Description of the novelty of the study was added in the end of the Introduction” – the novelty of the paper is still not there

·         In abstract – still, recommendations, limitations, and further studies is missing

·         Furthermore, the explanation of Economic indicators such as (Lack of resources; Unemployment; Price sensitivity; Level of farm debt; Market access; On-farm diversification; Off-farm diversification; Financial safety nets and others missing); environmental indicators ( overgrazing, soil erosion, land degradation, surface and groundwater supply, land use management practice and other missing )(, social indicators ( labour and other missing) – the respond is not convincing – still the authors- if they did not incorporate this variables – should include as a limitation of the paper

·         In the discussion section – the socioeconomic characteristics – policy implications, and others are missing

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Agriculture

Manuscript Draft

Manuscript Number: 3044469

Title: Economic, Social, and Environmental Factors Impacting Resilience and Challenges of Lithuanian Family Farms

Article Type: Research article

This manuscript is a good start to understanding the economic, social, and environmental factors that affect the resilience and challenges of Lithuanian family farms. The co-authors have made significant improvements to the manuscript in order for this to be suitable for publication in MDPI Agriculture. I do NOT need to review these final TWO substantive to this manuscript:

1) We will assume that Table 1 shows the reader the survey that was used so they can repeat this survey in the future. In Table 1, create a 3^rd column to the right and put all % frequencies in this column so that it is easier to understand. Change the title of the 2^nd column to Response.

2) For the citations listed in the References that have a page range listed, please follow this by a period and not a comma. So for example on L1199-1200 replace the comma with a period after the page range:

19. Bruce, A.; Jackson, C.; Lamprinopoulou, C. Social Networks and Farming Resilience. Outlook Agric 2021, 50, 196–205. doi:10.1177/0030727020984812.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review the revised version of the manuscript. I am glad to see that many comments have been addressed and have resulted in changes to the manuscript. Yet, unfortunately, the revisions made in most cases do not fully answer all of the questions and objections identified in the review. Here I list some of my further comments:

·       It is not clear if and how you differentiate between “factors” and “disturbances” both in the title and in the text? Please be cautious in the choice of terms and their use in the paper.

·       Please specify if and in what ways a Lithuanian family farm (in line with the definition you have now provided) differs from the conceptualisation of a family farm as proposed by other authors/countries.

·       As noted in my initial review, please provide a brief outline of the structure of the paper at the end of Section 1 to guide your reader.

·       One of the stated aims is to “identify the economic, social, and environmental  disturbances affecting Lithuanian family farms”, yet it probably should be made clear in the methods section that this was not tacked by the survey (but instead by “literature analysis, structured interviews, and discussions with agricultural specialists and farmers”; though in the initial response it was even stated that is is only “based on other studies and the groups of factors were distinguished based on other studies on farm resilience”), as the survey only measured the assessed impact of specified actor groups.

·       In the releation to the latter, from the survey questions (in Table 1) I do not see how specific disturbanced faced by family farms in Lithuania could be identified if in most questions these are apriori defined and clustered into more general categories. This seems to be a major shortcoming of the methodology and considerably limits the value of the study and its results.

·       How about multi-functional family farms that engage in tourism and other on-farm activities beyond agriculture? This type of farms seem to be totally missing from the study, while this can by itself represent a resiience-buiding strategy.

·       While you have included references (58, 59, 60 (line 1064)) to the articles on CEE countries as suggested in my initial review, unfortunately this has been done quite formally, as I would expect a more substantial discussion on the differences in the disturbances and resilience factors/srategies identified in these studies and tgose revealed in your study.

·       While you’ve followed my initial advice to be consistent in the use of the central concept of disturabance (instead of additional alterantive terms), currently there are quite a few replacements made that seem to be done without careful consideration of their approapriatness in the specific sentence.

·       You have not provided a response to my question about correlatiosn vs. causalities (reposnse to the previosu question has just been copied there; this is not the only instance where this is the case in the response file, thus leaving the gven questions unaddressed).

 

·       I still do not see that authors have made an effotr in reflecting in a more comprehensive manner on the theoretical, methodological and empirical implications of the study in the discussion section.

L18 – “ using a semi-structured interview as an expert interview”? [ Survey research was conducted using a semi-structured interview as an expert interview in which 18 various types of variables were collected.] – please revise the sentence.

L28  - Pleasee add a comma (The obtained results proved that higher education  levels larger farm sizes)

L40 – “in terms of “

L49&57 – Check and correct for the overap in the content.

L58 – Here the replacement of ‘pressure’ by ‘disturbance’ is not adequate.

L81-82 – If and how do you differentiate ‘distrbances’  and ‘disruptions’?

L89-90 – Can you please give an examle in the text of some ‘general disturbances’ and some ‘specific disturbances’ faced by farms? Namenly, I can understand general vs.specific resilience, but not sure about the distinction with regard to disturbances.

L141-160 – Please add supporting references!

L143-147 - Please expain how robustness links with and/or differs form ‘resilience’ upon the first mention (cuurently that comes only a few paragraphs later).  

L150 – What do you mean by “optimally redundant farms”?

L158 – “predict possible future one's events or situations”? Please check the sentence.

L158-160 – What informants? Please add a reference.

L163 – “disturbance or shock” – the differentiation earlier was between “stresses and shocks” (both are subtypes of disturbances). Please be consistent!

L171 – “Many research is..” - please correct  

L181 – Here you list three capacities - disturbance absorption, adaptation, and transformation; yet in what follows you explain robustness, adaptability and transformability. Please be consstent in the categories you use. Besides, robustness as aconncept is intrpduced way above, but not exlained at the outset, thus it creaates a lot of confusion for the reader. Please check the way you structure the narrative. Also, if you devote space in te introduction for discussion these different capabilites and aspects of resileince, please ensure taht you refer to, make use of, and reflect upn those also in your analysis/discussion/conclusions.

L267 – “factors which affects farm resilience” – please correct grammar.

L279-281 – This section seems to be misplaced, with no logica integation in the  flow of the argument.

L265-266 & 297-98 – Repetition (I pointed this out already in the initial review..)

L999-304 – Integrate this paragraph with the one in L95-100.

L305-306 – You still state that in the paper you “develop the concept of general resilience”, but this is a concept already present in the literature. So it is not clear what you mean by that. May be “apply” (instead of develop)?

L309-310 – Here you introduce ‘vulnerabiity factors’ but it has not been explained if and how these relate to disturbances, which has so far been the focus of the paper.

L305-316 – Please merge these two paragpraphs and make the overarching goal more clear, or enumerate the different aims ((1)…, (2) .., (3)…). Currently it is scattered around several foci.

L316-317 –  If you state this as he novelty of the paper you need to provide a more extensive overview of the studies from the region that you intend to enrich, showing the gaps  in earlier research that you aim to fill.

L376-387 – Please indicate concerte references not as a bunch in the first sentence but separately along the specific statements that pertain to these.

L359-387 – I would suggest that you intregate this with the two paragraphs on Lithuanian contex from the irntroduction, and move into a designated (sub)section. Then leave materials and methods section to describe specifically the methodology and data underlying your original study.

L388-395 – I wold suggets that you list the methods in the order that they were applied. If you started off with expert intreviews, then first describe those and then turn to the survey.

L398-399 – This does not explain through what registers or other sources the farms were identified.

L399-402 – Please justify this with concrete figures in a separate table.

L399-402 & L409-411 - Please elimnate text duplication.

L411-441 - One of your conclusions in the abstract  (and elseweher) is that “…employing permanent workers are associated with better resilience”, and you also empahised the cruacial role of off-farm work in describing the situation with family farms in Lithuania, but here you state that you have excluded this type of farms from your sample. This is really confusing! Please check and explain this. Also “non-main” needs to be reworded.

L444-447 – Please explain that in addition to expert interviews you had further informal diacissions with … Please justify in what capacity, wioth how many, etc. Even if informal, these details need to be provided as they form pa of the methodology you employed in developing the survey questionnaire.

L447-448 – Please also explain why this particular period was chosen. Besides, in Table 3 many questions refer to 2020-2023, not 2021-2023.

L448-449 – As a free comment field at the end of the questionnaire? But not with a possibility to add their own response aside from some predefined answers under each question?

L450-451 – Based on what do you judge that these factors of the general resilience are characteristic of Lithuanian family farms if the sources cited under Table 3 do not represent studies that cover Lithuania? Idnetified how and by whom? What is the role of your expert interviews and informal discussions here?

L471 – Disruptions as different from disturbances? Please explain!

L55-551 – How a family farm can be itself a cooperative??

L590-592 – Please specify these disturbances!

L608 –  I would say that replacement from challanges to disturbances here is not justified. Here and elsewhere please see the context of each sentence to decide on the approapriate term  (in case a change in terms  is considered) rather than making automatic replacements.

[..]

Apologies, but I stop here as there are too many unclarities and concerns in every paragraph. A further major revision is needed to consider this paper for publication.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Proofreading of the manuscript needs to be made as currenly additional language errors have emerged, along with quite a few duplications of whole sentences throughout the text.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf