PONE-D-21-29286Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food prices: Evidence from storable and perishable commodities in IndiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Bairagi,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

László Vasa, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: I Don't Know

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I liked your paper: you chose a signficant topic, and wrote in a very logical and comprehensive manner.

I would only recommend to indicate at the end of the manuscript the limitations of the study (i.e. that transfers and remittances were not included in the model), or giving hints for further research possibilities.

Reviewer #2: Dear Author,

While reading your work, I found the topic interesting but at the same time, I find some lack of proper design and limited methodology. As such, I want to draw the following issues:

1- The literature gap and the novelty of this work are not evident and clear;

2- There is a lack of data analysis and synthesis of the results;

3- Methodology used is very simple and does not offer a complete picture of what really happened t o the consumption of the three categories you present.

I hope you will take into consideration these comments and improve your work accordingly.

Best wishes!

Reviewer #3: The article discusses an interesting topic given the impact of the covid crisis on the price of staple foods in developing countries. The current covid crisis has affected food security in developing countries, as a result of dysfunctions in supply chains. The authors motivated well the choice of the three foods for their study considering their share in the consumption of the local population but also India's position on the international market

The article has the potential to be published but needs to be restructured and improved.

My main recommendations are:

1. The authors could emphasize, in the introduction, the covid crisis relationship - food security and SDGs (SDG 2 - zero hunger).

2. The introductory section is too long, I propose to break it down into two sections Introduction and Literature review.

3. In the Literature review section, the presented studies could be divided into several categories considering the complexity of the analyzed phenomenon –for example the impact of the covid crisis on supply chains, the impact of the covid crisis on population behavior (compulsive shopping, herd behavior) etc. For this section, additional refences coul be used

a) Alam, G. M., & Khatun, M. N. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 on vegetable supply chain and food security: Empirical evidence from Bangladesh. Plos one, 16(3), e0248120.

b) Di Crosta, A., Ceccato, I., Marchetti, D., La Malva, P., Maiella, R., Cannito, L., ... & Di Domenico, A. (2021). Psychological factors and consumer behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. PloS one, 16(8), e0256095.

c) Loxton, M., Truskett, R., Scarf, B., Sindone, L., Baldry, G., & Zhao, Y. (2020). Consumer behaviour during crises: preliminary research on how coronavirus has manifested consumer panic buying, herd mentality, changing discretionary spending and the role of the media in influencing behaviour. Journal of risk and financial management, 13(8), 166.

4. In the conclusions section, the authors must present the limits of the research (for example, the small number of products analyzed) and the future directions of research.

5. The theoretical and practical implications of the study need to be extended. Please, see for example …………..Khan, S. A. R., Razzaq, A., Yu, Z., Shah, A., Sharif, A., & Janjua, L. (2021). Disruption in food supply chain and undernourishment challenges: An empirical study in the context of Asian countries. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 101033.

6. The population was affected differently by this black swan event, the vulnerable categories having to be in the attention of the public authorities. Specific measures should be proposed and implemented by public authorities to reduce the impact of the covid crisis on vulnerable groups. Please, see for example

a) Singh, D. R., Sunuwar, D. R., Shah, S. K., Sah, L. K., Karki, K., & Sah, R. K. (2021). Food insecurity during COVID-19 pandemic: A genuine concern for people from disadvantaged community and low-income families in Province 2 of Nepal. Plos one, 16(7), e0254954.

7. In the discussion section, the authors must present the results of similar studies that confirm or refute the conclusions of the analysis performed by them.

8. Certain phrases need to be reworded (certain words are repeated or the authors have not found the best wording For example line 325-326 ”Therefore, governments in India could take necessary actions such as distributing staple foods from its public food distribution system”

Reviewer #4: Quality of paper is average in its current state. Do brainstorming, read more and conceptualise a clear idea.

Indians do not only eat aata, Onion and Rice. India being the largest producer of food grains and with large storages of food grains, there was no scarcity of food.

Refer: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/in-6-years-over-40-000-tonnes-of-food-grains-damaged-in-fci-godowns-1696650-2020-07-03

https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=in&commodity=wheat&graph=production

Wheat and Rice is not the only consumable by Indians. Indians do consume Pulses, oil seeds, Fruits, vegetables, Wheat, Jawar, Bajra and other types of millets.

Though suppychain was a challenge, it did not have burden on supply side. Hording by end users, wholesalers and retailers had impact. Government policies had positive impact.

While talking about ‘walmart, flipkart’ and ‘, smallholders opted for local retail markets’ you missed avenue supermarts and reliance retail.

Structure and Flow of paper should be: Introduction, Structured Literature Review, Research Questions / Hypothesis, Research Methodology, Analysis of Data and Discussion, Findings and Conclusion. Research questions must arise after Literature review.

How this study of ‘COVID-19 pandemic on food prices: 2 Evidence from storable and perishable commodities in India’ case will be of interest for international readers of the journal?

There is no useful research output in this paper. There are generalised statements and parameters.

I conclude that paper do not contribute significantly to the body of knowledge or create any significant new knowledge to justify.

Paper must be properly formatted and rewritten.

Please verify all calculations and eliminate errors if any.

I suggest major revision.

Implement changes and resubmit paper.

Best Wishes.

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If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

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PONE-D-21-29286R1Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food prices: Evidence from storable and perishable commodities in IndiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Baigari,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by 10.12.2021. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

László Vasa, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Partly

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: The article has been improved by the authors and it can be published considering the quality of the authors' scientific approach.

Reviewer #4: I appreciate efforts taken by authors to revise paper as per comments of several reviewers. Still please try to implement few further changes. Structure and Flow of paper should be: Introduction, Structured Literature Review, Research Questions / Hypothesis, Research Methodology, Analysis of Data and Discussion, Findings and Conclusion. Research questions must arise after Literature review.

Please verify all calculations and eliminate errors if any.

I ask you to refer following articles for making literature review strong:

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256921 , https://doi.org/10.1504/ijenm.2021.118057 , https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254954

Implement changes and resubmit paper.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food prices: Evidence from storable and perishable commodities in India

PONE-D-21-29286R2

Dear Dr. Bairagi,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

László Vasa, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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