Economic Assessment and Management of Agroforestry Productivity from the Perspective of Sustainable Land Use in the South of the Russian Plain

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The reviewed article raises interesting and ecologically important issues related to proper forest management. Importantly, it also has a practical aspect. Unfortunately, the article requires a few corrections before it is published in Forests.

1. Chapter 2 (Materials and methods) lacks any characteristics of the analyzed stands, the productivity of which is analyzed in the Results chapter.
2. With reference to point 1 above, I suggest that you separate the methodological part from the results. It seems to me that Lines 253-266 is a literature review (or part of chapter 2) rather than a result. Also lines 267-269 do not concern the results, only the methodology. It is similar in chapter 3.2. Lines 370-373 is a literature review, while Lines 374-385 is a characteristic of the analyzed systems, which should be presented in Chapter 2 as Materials. The same is true for lines 423-434 and 451-457. They should be part of Chapter 2.
3. I suggest dividing subchapter 3.1 into two subchapters. The title suggests the "Economic assessment", while it mainly deals with issues related to the structure of stands and their productivity, while the economy itself is presented in two tables only at the end. Similarly, subsection 3.2 should be divided into "technical" and "economic" parts.
4. The Discussion, which is in fact an extension of the introduction and the second review of the literature, also raises major objections. There is no real comparison of the presented results (e.g. the productivity of the analyzed systems) with the results obtained by other authors in similar geographic and climatic conditions. This applies to both economic and technical issues. In the discussion, the authors propose, for example, specific solutions in the field of ecological engineering, but do not confirm their correctness based on the literature data.
5. The presented conclusions, especially the first three paragraphs, which give the impression of repeating the results presented earlier, also need to be rebuilt.
6. The methodological assumptions seem to be correct, although they are based on studies from the early 1980s. Has the technology changed since then?

Here are a few minor points for improvement:

Line 25 - probably should be EUR

Line 118 - please correct the title of the subsection.

Line 141 - it seems to me that the subsection should already be number 2.2. Separating one subsection (2.1.1) in 2.1 is pointless

Line 132 - please change the record of the units to the same as in line 185

Line 212 - why do the authors use the term biofuels?

Line 240 - please check the "t year" unit

Line 241 - is m a unit of Effmax?

Table 3 - should the title say "biotechnological"?

Lines 420-422 - literature reference is required

Author Response

См вложение

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper  deals with important topic -Economic Assessment and Management of Agroforestry Productivity however the paper needs improvement. Methodology is not clearly presented. What is the relationship of this assessment with sustainable development. The title is misleading. The literature review is poor. Old sources were cited. Agroforestry productivity is very popular topic. The author should show why her approach is better in comparison  of other  various studies dealing with assessment of agriculture and forestry productivity with negative  outcome  and applying various advanced  frontier analysis tools.  Where is sustainable development in her productivity assessment.. The concepts need to be described and background needs to be provided. There are many spelling mistakes in this paper. The author should be more careful before submitting paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I believe that the authors have addressed all the comments I have submitted and put a lot of work into improving the article. Generally, the article could be published as it is. However, I suggest the authors include the content of sub-chapters 2.4.1.1 and 2.4.2. after chapter 2.1. as a continuation of the description of the research object.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, Thank you very much for your valuable comments on improving our article

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors did good job and have revised their manuscript based on comments of all reviewers therefore I advice to publish this paper in current form. The current version of manuscript is significantly improved.