The Development of a Service System for Facilitating Food Resource Allocation and Service Exchange

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript "The Development of a Service System for Facilitating Food Resource Allocation and Service Exchange" aims to develop a Cooperative Human-Agent Service System (CHASS), to address the current limitation of alternative food networks for contributing to urban-rural sustainability.

The study is interesting and the conclusions are supported by the simulations carried out.

However, the text is too long and the reader eventually gets lost. I suggest strongly reducing the whole first part (paragraphs 1-4), possibly inserting appendices, and concentrating on the part strictly related to the study.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I like very much  your article and I really appreciate the effort done by you two and the intense work as a  team.

As a remark I want to ask  you to search for more articles related to your work, published in the last 1-3 years in journals indexed in Q1 and Q2 and to use them like references to your article. Also, please use more references to your article from the papers already published in MDPI , especially Sustainability.

I wish you all the best for a Great job !

EG

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Overall, this is a clear, concise, and well-written manuscript. The introduction is relevant and theory based. However, to make the introduction more substantial, the author may wish to provide several references to substantiate the claim made. You are encouraged to address the comments of the reviewers and carefully revise the manuscript, indicating the exact changes made in the manuscript.

Arrange the manuscript as per the format.

The authors may add the previous study findings for readers to follow the present study rationale and procedures.

It is suggested to improve the quality of diagrams. The proposed model is not understandable, the author can describe by designing a flow chart.

It is suggested to add number of recent references that validates your proposed work in comparison with various techniques from the literature.

Correct your references sections as their format is not uniform also add latest references from year 2020 and 2022.

In conclusion section authors should interpret the results, place them in context of previous findings and also explain future research.

To conclude, I do recommend the publication of the current manuscript after these following addition and changes.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

Dear authors, 

Your work is interesting, perhaps it is a good paper in "computer science." However, it is such rocket science and not applicable enough if it is looked at from the agricultural economics perspective.  In short, anyone can see that the authors have no idea about anything in the field. I understand that perhaps you don't have any expertise in agriculture, but I also believe that you want your model can be applied to many audiences in the future. You need to look further at other perspectives rather than the IT scope. Here are some points that perhaps you need to consider. 

1. Your literature review is way too long. It is eight pages alone just for the literature review, and it makes the readers already too tired to read the rest. And I believe you are not making a review article here. 

Well, so kindly make it simple. 

In the case of food and agriculture, we often face the problem of a long supply chain. Summarize this matter from the perspective of the producers, distributors, and consumers. After that, explain why the multi-agent system or whatever system you want to propose can solve those problems. Why it is important? and how it is quite novel? 

2. Also, perhaps it is better to summarize what is the previous paper or research already said about this. Why is it important for you and Taiwan to build this kind of prototype? Why it is a problem in your country? 

3. I am asking for the 1st and 2nd points because, for me, your prototype is not that novel and too complicated to be applied to the supplier, farmers, or even customers. 

I am not sure about the case of Taiwan, but in developing countries, everyone is already very comfortable with their simple communication network just by WhatsApp or an e-commerce app. 

For example, during the covid-19 pandemic, many apartments and households in Indonesia are trapped in lockdown. However, they already have a "contact person (CP)" who will help them to buy groceries for their daily life. And it works!

Also, in Indonesia, there is already a lot of e-commerce to sell fruit and vegetables. So, everyone can check the app and choose which project is available or not. 

Moreover, in most urban areas in Southeast Asia, family members, especially females in the family, usually already have the phone numbers of sellers of almost all shops and farmers' markets. Every mom in today's world only needs to text their favourite shop or seller. 

So, what will make your prototype give a "value-added" for today's world? How is your prototype more "convenient" than the system that already formed automatically in today's society? If I am the consumer, and you offer your prototype to me with this paper as your proposal, I will reject it. 

4. What is the main target of your prototype? Farmers? Distributors? Consumer? or government? Please be in mind that Taiwan is highly reliant on imported foods because the country has very limited arable land. So how do you predict the food supply? 

You cannot rely on the local farmer, but you also need to check the number of imported foods. And it is, although not impossible, very challenging to quantify both the local production and the imported foods at the same time. 

4. Figure 12. 
It is not like you are figuring out how the farmers make decisions. 

Harvesting is NOT ALWAYS at the same time, especially because of climate change, weather changes, technology, etc. Also, when harvesting, not all of the products are harvested. The farmers will spare some for seed and perhaps feed. Also, some portions will also be going as food loss. 

At least you should consider, at least for the commodities you choose as the sample, kindly learn its detail. 

5. Table 1. It is a total blunder. How big is cabbage in Taiwan until its yield is 7 tonnes per acre? If Taiwan can reach that, it will be the biggest exporter of cabbage in the world! Did you know that the unit of cabbage is "head", not all heads are harvested. The farmers usually remove the outer leaves as it is broken or dirty. That's common practice in East Asia. It makes the yield of cabbage, is relatively small. 

I know all of you are good in IT, but again, I humbly demand you to read a bit more about the yield of agricultural crops to make a "make sense" assumption on crops. Please!

6. Table 2. 

all assumptions in this table are also debatable. For example. the harvest time is 14. 14 times of one farm? What do you mean? So the farmers can harvest >1 times in a month? (1 year= 12 month). 

In planting, whatever the crop is, and whatever the technology you use, a crop will need seedling, germinating, etc., until it can be ready to harvest. Especially if you want to plan your 7 tones cabbage, it may need time. 

Also, you have four seasons. In a sub-tropic climate, farmers do not plant during winter. So, how did that 14 times come from? 

And land cultivation ratio 100%? Oh, come on! When you plant something, you need to keep some distance between each crop. 

7. Because all of your assumptions about crops are not making sense, please read any literature about yield, crop intensity, etc. I understand it is not your expertise, but please try to make a rational assumption, so people can accept the result of your system prototype. 

8. Table 3. weekly demand quality. 

4-10? why? Is the Taiwanese household always consume lettuce every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? I think rather than make assumptions based on the "weight" of your lettuce and cabbage, it is more rational to expect the lifestyle of a Taiwanese household. For example, in the urban areas, how much is the population? Is it more a family household or a single- household? If there are more single-households, they will consume fewer vegetables and prefer something more carbo as it is more satisfying.

Or you can simply assume that each household is at least eating lettuce 3 times/ week and cabbage two times/week. So, it will be easier to understand by your reader. 

9. In the real world, consumer demand, perhaps, happens every day. In Japan, it is a culture in which consumers buy groceries for 1-2 weeks of stock. Make it a bit easier to predict the demand. But in southeast Asian countries, people buy groceries in small quantities daily. So, how is it in Taiwan? A bit more like in Japan? or like in Southeast Asian countries? Kindly explain that kinds of socio-culture thing in your paper. 

10. Why do you include negotiation here? In the agribusiness world, if someone has already entered the business, they already have a supplier in their mind. And they already have more than one supplier. So, if supplier A has a problem, they still have suppliers B and C. I don't know in the case of Taiwan, but in my experience, the negotiation only happens occasionally, and the seller will have some contracts with some suppliers. Please check the common agribusiness system in your country

11. colour in p.22 is different. 

12. please consult a proofreader to check your English. 

13. You can make your paper more compact. Again your literature review is too long and distracts the main highlight of your paper. 

14. In your conclusion, you said that your prototype potentially reduces the cost. I cannot find an explanation for this important result anywhere. Would you mind explaining your result a bit further and clearer? 

Author Response

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