The Agroecological Approach as a Model for Multifunctional Agriculture and Farming towards the European Green Deal 2030—Some Evidence from the Italian Experience

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Some specific questions and comments:

What do you actually mean by this, stating line 23: "distinguishing themselves for the coexistence of elements that affect not only agricultural practice, but also ethical and social aspects and involving, at the same time, farmers and communities that insist on the territory"? 

What you mean by "the contamination of skills" in this context?

How do you explain the "Ethical aspects" in figure 3.? This comes also later. 

What do you mean by "Biological process" in figure 5?

Why are "hedges" taken into figure 6? How would you comment on the role or lacking role of them?

What you mean by transformation and processing" in figure 7? In the text above you have "transformation and sale"? 

Line 664 "Multifunctional farms operate by applying principles of ethics that permeate their entire space for action, production, relational, commercial, informative and communicative." This should be better opened.

Please comment also on the potential impact of the age of your case farms. 

Author Response

Thank you for useful suggestion. Please see our responses in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Editor.

I have finished my review on the proposed paper: "The Agroecological Approach as a Model for Multifunctional Agriculture and Farming towards the European Green Deal 2030. Some Evidence from the Italian Experience”, sustainability-1077681-peer-review-v1.

 

Summary of the manuscript:

The authors examined the model adopted by the Italian multifunctional farms in order to find if this model meets the standards of agroecology and sustainable agriculture.

 

General review:

The proposed paper is very well written with very good use of English language. Except some minor grammatical mistakes, this paper is written with a very qualitative scientific style. It begins with an appropriate and informative abstract and following the Introduction that helps the reader to get into the subject immediately. In Introduction, in my opinion, the literature that was used is appropriate for the subject of the paper. At the end of Introduction, authors clearly state the goals of the research. The methodology of research is well documented, in a way that other researches could repeated it. The results are presented in a comprehensive way, so the reader is not confused. In my opinion tables and figures are easily understandable. The results were scientifically explained with the constant use of scientific literature.

 

Points for revision:

Line 219: “OECD”. This is the first time that this abbreviation appears in the text. So, you should provide the full explanation of OECD.

The paper deals with the agroecology, the agriculture techniques that farmers apply in the study area (Italy) and the consequences of these practices on multiple issues (environmental, social and economic). From this aspect I didn’t find in the text anything about the water. Water is a fundamental factor of environment and necessary element for crop production. So, what about the water use in the study area? How much is the quantity of the water demand? What are the main sources of water?  What are the main ecological practices to reduce the water demand in crop production, especially is this Mediterranean country that faces in summer water scarcity? What are the ecological measures to preserve water resources and use them in summer months?

You can use the following literature from countries with water scarcity in summer:   

Sofios, S., Arabatzis, G., Baltas, E. 2008. Policy for Management of Water Resources in Greece. Environmentalist, 28, 185–194, DOI 10.1007/s10669-007-9126-4.

Kastridis A. and D. Stathis, 2015. The effect of small earth dams and reservoirs on water management in North Greece (Kerkini Municipality). Silva Balcanica, 16(2)/2015. https://silvabalcanica.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/sb_162-2015-071-084.pdf

Mugabe, F.T., Hodnett, M.G., Senzanje, A. 2003. Opportunities for increasing productive water use from dam water: a case study from semi-arid Zimbabwe. Agricultural Water Management 62, 149-163.

 

Moreover, you didn’t mention anything about the rural and forest road network that provides access to the agricultural farm. It widely known that forest roads and especially rural roads significantly affect the hydrological processes of the watersheds (Kastridis 2020), the ecohydrological (stream water pollution) disturbances associated with roads (Wemple et al. 2018) and soil erosion (Benda et al. 2019). The heavy traffic of rural roads in combination with heavy machinery exacerbates the soil erosion and surface runoff.

Wemple, B.; Browning, T.; Ziegler, A.D.; Celi, J.E.; Chun, K.P.; Jaramillo, F.; Leite, N.K.; Ramchunder, S.J.; Negishi, J.N.; Palomeque, X.; et al. Ecohydrological disturbances associated with roads: Current knowledge, research needs, and management concerns with reference to the tropics. Ecohydrology 2018, 11, e1881.

Kastridis, Aristeidis. 2020. Impact of Forest Roads on Hydrological Processes. Forests 11, no. 11: 1201, https://doi.org/10.3390/f11111201.

Benda, L.; James, C.; Miller, D.; Andras, K. Road Erosion and Delivery Index (READI): A model for evaluating unpaved road erosion and stream sediment delivery. J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc. 2019, 55, 459–484.

Use the above literature an provide some description of this problem in your study area and the possible measures that have been taken to reduce the negative influence of rural and forest roads. If there aren’t any measures in your study you can propose new measures according to the literature and the international practice.

Also, in my opinion you should divide the section “5. Findings and discussion” in two sections namely “discussion” and “conclusions”. And in “discussion” section you should compare your findings with other EU countries, especially Mediterranean countries.

 

Author Response

Thank you for useful suggestion. Please see our responses in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Great thanks for the corrections.

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewers for their contribution to our research.