Investigating Contribution Factors of Grain Input to Output Transformation for the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review your work. This manuscript investigates the changes in grain production in an ecologically important area of China, the IMAR using several descriptive statistics and the Cobb Douglas production function to discern the reasons behind the increases in productivity.
Overall, I find the paper well written and well structured. What is missing for me in the paper is the novelty and significance of the work. How well investigated is the IMAR? How does your study benefit science, or society? It is a very technical presentation and needs more weight on how the findings can help in the bigger picture. I would suggest those changes before acceptance.
General comment: the terminology “agro-meteorological disasters” is used consistently through this paper. I understand its usage here but the IPCC framework describes a disaster as a function of its risk: hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. I am not sure therefore if this should rather be “agrometeorological hazard” rather than disaster.
Lines 35-58 are well written and give good context, but lack references. Where are these data from?
Lines 84-85 again missing a reference to this barrier plan.
89-90 on terminology: ‘natural disasters’ is no longer readily accepted in the DRR community. ‘Natural hazard’ would be better.
96 reference?
220-221 Italicize the species names
Figure 4, this is a helpful figure but perhaps you can merge the bars together as the white space in between makes it difficult to read.
Figures 7-8 Would it be possible to change the x-axis to the year and the different treatments as the different colors instead? It is more intuitive that way as the y is the dependent variable here.
Results: Overall I find the results section well-written, and straightforward in nature.
383 what do you mean by ‘plant benefits’?
Lines 398: “Despite the strong tendency of small farm holders to plant maize in IMAR, it is not in line with the regional agricultural development plans and policies to ensure food security. Inner Mongolia is an important ecological security barrier in northern China and produces one-third the country’s green organic food. Being the country’s agricultural and livestock production base (Li, 2017), it is important to design and manage its landscape, forest, farmland, lake, grass, and sand in a systematic manner which requires long-term efforts.”
As a reader this sounds like you are saying that IMAR is more appropriate for other types of cultivation, and this would be in line with the regional development plans, and that smallholder farmers should stop cultivating maize? Why does this ‘tendency’ occur, perhaps in the context of traditions and culture? Perhaps this paragraph can be re-formulated as its purpose is not immediately clear
413 scare -- > scarce
427 see above comment on natural disasters.
434 Please elaborate (1 sentence more) on how films can cause crop failure?
Author Response
Thank you very much for your time to review this manuscript. We really appreciate all your comments and we have considered these comments carefully and tried our best to adress all of them.
Point 1: Overall, I find the paper well written and well structured. What is missing for me in the paper is the novelty and significance of the work. How well investigated is the IMAR? How does your study benefit science, or society? It is a very technical presentation and needs more weight on how the findings can help in the bigger picture. I would suggest those changes before acceptance.
Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. Based on your suggestion, we have added a brief paragragraph in the Introduction section highlighting the significance of our work, and how it can be of a purpose for scientific community addressing food security issues. The additions made are as follows:
Line 91-108
Though as an important agricultural and livestock production base in Northern China (Li, 2017), the grain output of IMAR has continued to increase over the years, transforming from a province once dependent on grain inputs from other provinces to China's main grain output province. Due to its geographical location and arid to semi-arid weather conditions, the agricultural ecological environment of IMAR is fragile (Chen et al. 2022), and sustainability of grain production in the future remains uncertain. In addition to these factors, zero growth in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides policy implementation (Jin and Zhou, 2018; MARA, 2015) from 2015, and in face of water resource restriction (Qian et al. 2011), the cultivated land of IMAR is still limited (Cui et al. 2022). In the future, the increase in grain production due to increase in cultivated land may be limited due to restricted use of land resources. The increase in output caused by the use of large amount of agricultural resources input may cause environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (Wang et al. 2016), while the decrease in output caused by disasters may be alleviated by taking disaster prevention and mitigation measures. But the information on all these contribution factors is limited in the current literature. The contribution analysis of availability of arable land, agricultural resource input, and agricultural natural hazards are important to devise local policies to secure ecological environment and regional food security in the future. For this reason, a clear understanding of the historical influences of different factors on increase in IMAR grain production is essential, therefore objectives of this study were to evaluate the influence of factors such as sown area, plantation structure, and yield on the grain production increase in IMAR from 1980 to 2019.
Point 2: General comment: the terminology “agro-meteorological disasters” is used consistently through this paper. I understand its usage here but the IPCC framework describes a disaster as a function of its risk: hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. I am not sure therefore if this should rather be “agrometeorological hazard” rather than disaster.
Response 2: Thank you for highlighting this. We have changed “agro-meteorological disasters” to “agro-meteorological hazards” throughout in this paper.
Point 3: Lines 35-58 are well written and give good context, but lack references. Where are these data from?
Response 3: We have added and listed references, and listed specific reference in referrences chapter.
Line 30-55
China’s grain production output has increased substantially and consistently, since the implementation of Chinese economic reforms back in 1979, known in the west as opening up of China. During the reform period, agricultural production increased significantly, rural industries absorbed a significant proportion of farm labor, poverty decreased dramatically, and the level and quality of food consumption improved sharply. These reforms allowed individual families to lease land from collectives which ensured that rural households have access to cultivatable land and allowed them to be self-sufficient in food production (Brandt, et al., 2008). This initiative facilitated continuous economic growth despite the limited area of arable land and a significantly large volume of rural labor (McMillan, 1989). Both of these factors were advantageous for cultivating labor-intensive crops such as fruits and vegetables, and disadvantageous for land-intensive crops such as grains and seed oils (Garnaut and Song, 1999). Being the world’s largest developing economy, achieving food self-sufficiency and maintaining a significant increase in total grain output, was therefore an important priority. Despite these limitations, owing to the heavy utilization of traditional input resources, improved crop varieties through scientific research and agricultural practices, introduction of machineries, improved the production processes, and efficiency of grain production rose drastically, with a slight decline from 1998 to 2003 (Yu, et al., 2017).
Since the economic reforms and moving on the path to be self-sufficient, the increase in grain production remained an important national priority. With continuous developments and efforts, the total grain production of China hit a new record of 682.85 Mt in 2021, which has increased more than two-fold compared to that of 1981 (325.02 Mt). Despite the consistent domestic output, China still remains reliant on global markets for a few major products such as maize, cotton, soybeans, and sugar. Even though yield is affected by regional plantation structure and regional grain production through the farmer’s choice of cultivar varieties, especially small householders (Qi et al. 2009), but sown area has been a major limitation to the national grain production of China (Liu et al. 2013). Interestingly, from 1996 to 2016, the sown area has increased in northern China while decreased in southern China, likely due to rapid industrialization, urbanization and infrastructure development (Deng et al. 2005), and increase in non-agricultural employment opportunities (Lu et al. 2008) in southern China, moving the center of grain productivity gradually to the north (Liu et al. 2019).
Point 4: Lines 84-85 again missing a reference to this barrier plan.
Response 4: We have added and listed references, and listed specific reference in referrences chapter.
Line 69-71
The barrier plan has set a total of 17 indicators, including 11 binding indicators such as the amount of forest land, basic grassland area, wetland area, and ecological restoration area (Teller Report, 2021).
Point 5: 89-90 on terminology: ‘natural disasters’ is no longer readily accepted in the DRR community. ‘Natural hazard’ would be better.
Response 5: We have changed “agro-meteorological disasters” to “agro-meteorological hazards” in this paper just as response to point 2.
Point 6: 96 reference?
Response 6: We have added and listed references, and listed specific reference in referrences chapter.
Line 78-81
Improved weather information systems, water conservation techniques, and irrigation initiatives (including the use of plastic-film mulching in some drier areas), over the years as well as the use of chemical fertilizers (Han and Han, 2014) have made it possible to significantly increase agricultural output of IMAR.
Point 7: 220-221 Italicize the species names.
Response 7: We have italicized the species names, in line 207-208.
Point 8: Figure 4, this is a helpful figure but perhaps you can merge the bars together as the white space in between makes it difficult to read.
Response 8: We have merged the bars together of figure 4 to make it easier to read.
Point 9: Figures 7-8 Would it be possible to change the x-axis to the year and the different treatments as the different colors instead? It is more intuitive that way as the y is the dependent variable here.
Response 9: We are sorry for that we have mis-presented in the paper for that the bars in figure 7 means hazard influenced area of different intensities of varies times periods, and for figure 8, different bars means average grain yields of varies grain species. And we can not change the x-axis to the year because it may lead to misunderstanding. For example, if we change figure 8b as below, we can’t do statistical analysis of the afrrerences of hazard-covered crop zrea between times periods. So we changed the notes of figure 7 and figure 8, in line and line, respectively, but kept the original figures.
Point 10: 383 what do you mean by ‘plant benefits’?
Response 10: We have changed “plant benefits” to ” grain receipts”, in line 365.
Point 11: Lines 398: “Despite the strong tendency of small farm holders to plant maize in IMAR, it is not in line with the regional agricultural development plans and policies to ensure food security. Inner Mongolia is an important ecological security barrier in northern China and produces one-third the country’s green organic food. Being the country’s agricultural and livestock production base (Li, 2017), it is important to design and manage its landscape, forest, farmland, lake, grass, and sand in a systematic manner which requires long-term efforts.” As a reader this sounds like you are saying that IMAR is more appropriate for other types of cultivation, and this would be in line with the regional development plans, and that smallholder farmers should stop cultivating maize? Why does this ‘tendency’ occur, perhaps in the context of traditions and culture? Perhaps this paragraph can be re-formulated as its purpose is not immediately clear
Response 11: Thank you for your suggestion. We have rephared it to bring clarity. The changes are as follows:
Line 382-409.
Small farm holders prefer to plant maize due to its high production and profit in IMAR, but it is not completely in line with the regional agricultural development plans and policies to ensure food security and protect the environment.
From the aspect of food security, the farming-pastoral ecotone of Northern China (FPENC) is an area with scarce water resources, sensitive to climate change and facing desertification and serious natural hazards due to drought and aridification trends (MARA, 2015). Due to the climate sensitivity and availability of agricultural climate resources, maize planting on large tracts of land is not suitable for the regional combination of farming and animal husbandry and to upgrade agricultural industry in the region (MARA, 2016). This issue requires special measures such as increase the silage corn plantation, adjusting high water consumption crops such as maize to the low water consumption crops (flax and forage rape) (MARA, 2015) in the Hetao plain irrigated agricultural area. Also in IMAR, production and sown area should be expanded for tube crops (Zhang, 2015) and miscellaneous grains and beans (Zhang et al., 2003) using varieties that are drought and low temperature resistant, and suitable for arid regions at high latitudes.
From the aspect of environment protection, Inner Mongolia is an important ecological security barrier in northern China and produces one-third of the country’s green organic food, being the country’s agricultural and livestock production base (Li, 2017). The input, yield and risk were both high for the maize production system in the northwest China, and the average greenhouse gas emission, soil acidification potential and water eutrophication were 4188kg CO2-eq·hm-2, 155.3 kg SO2-eq·hm-2 and 52.6 kg PO4-eq·hm-2 (Qiao et al. 2022). Single crop structure and continued cultivation of maize caused environmental problems such as soil hardening and desertification (Liang, 2020). Maize-soybean belt compound planting can be adopted to gain high production with less nitrogen fertilizer amendment (Li et al. 2017). It is important to design and manage its landscape, forest, farmland, lake, grass, and sand in a systematic manner which requires long-term efforts. In order to achieve the national goal of food self-sufficiency, it is important to save the ecological capital specifically water resources. Northern China's grassland ecosystems, especially water resource conservation regions for the Yellow, Yangzi, Lancang, and Luanhe rivers, are major ecological security barriers. Due to the overexploitation of ecological functions, the grassland ecosystems of Northern China have seen extensive decline in functions and services over the last several decades. Strategic decisions and plans are needed for regional development to achieve national food security and ecological conservation goals and agricultural and livestock production base of China (Li, 2017).
Point 12: 413 scare -- > scarce.
Response 12: We have changed “scare” to “scarce”, in line 385.
Point 13: 427 see above comment on natural disasters.
Response 13: We have changed “agro-meteorological disasters” to “agro-meteorological hazards” in this paper.
Point 14: 434 Please elaborate (1 sentence more) on how films can cause crop failure?
Response 14: We have added a scetence “because residual films can affect the root development of crops and transport of water and fertilizer and lead to crop failure” to elaborate it, in line 423-425.
Please see the attachment for figures.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This study evaluates the contribution of factors of production on yield increment using the 40 years of data from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. This is an exciting topic, and I believe it contributes to the literature on crop production and production economics. Despite my support for this manuscript, it warrants revision before considering for publication.
Authors need to justify why estimated Cobb Douglas production. Several crop yield response functions are there to model the yield response to input (for eg, water, nutrients, labor) applications. Some are linear, quadratic, linear response and plateau, etc. Please refer to the following manuscript that summarizes some widely used production functions to model the yield response to input(s).
Dhakal, C., & Lange, K. (2021). Crop yield response functions in nutrient application: A review. Agronomy Journal, 113(6), 5222-5234. https://doi.org/10.1002/agj2.20863
This reviewer understands that no model is superior to another, and the appropriate crop model is a function of several parameters. I would suggest authors acknowledge this limitation in the discussion or somewhere. Please note that the Cobb Douglas function imposes an arbitrary level for substitution between inputs.
Besides, some grammatical errors need to be taken care of.
line 4: remove "IMAR" from the title
line 13: change "production" to "producing"
line 14: change "to" before the total.. to "of"
line 15: increased "by" around 821% from ...
line 16: yield "to" the increase in production
line 17" production function was "estimated"
line 19: Do not have to repeat grain yield- just write yield
make tables stand alone, do not have to mention IMAR everywhere in tables and figures.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your time to review this manuscript. We really appreciate all your comments and we have considered these comments carefully and tried our best to adress all of them.
Point 1: Authors need to justify why estimated Cobb Douglas production. Several crop yield response functions are there to model the yield response to input (for eg, water, nutrients, labor) applications. Some are linear, quadratic, linear response and plateau, etc. Please refer to the following manuscript that summarizes some widely used production functions to model the yield response to input(s). Dhakal, C., & Lange, K. (2021). Crop yield response functions in nutrient application: A review. Agronomy Journal, 113(6), 5222-5234. https://doi.org/10.1002/agj2.20863. This reviewer understands that no model is superior to another, and the appropriate crop model is a function of several parameters. I would suggest authors acknowledge this limitation in the discussion or somewhere. Please note that the Cobb Douglas function imposes an arbitrary level for substitution between inputs.
Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out.
In line 412-419.
Production functions such as stochastic plateau functions, quadratic response, Mitscherlich–Baule, and deterministic can be used to fit crop yield to agricultural inputs for example nutrients for crop in specific geographic region and help to estimate optimal inputs to ensure food security (Dhakal and Lange, 2021). Most of the studies focused on the effect of typical driver such as nitrogen (Alivelu et al. 2003; Dhakal et al. 2019) and potassium (Harmon et al. 2017) on yield from agronomy aspect. The yield fit with improper response function may affect the accuracy (Tumusiime et al. 2011). In this study, Cobb-Douglas production function (Douglas, 1976) was chosen to synthetically analyse the multiple relationships between yield, agricultural inputs and natural hazards. Relevant discussions have been supplemented in the paper.
In line 452-454.
Uncertainties can also exist in the choice of appropriate production functions (Dhakal and Lange, 2021), the Cobb Douglas function may impose an arbitrary level for substitution between inputs.
Point 2: line 4: remove "IMAR" from the title.
Response 2: We have removed "IMAR" from the title.
Point 3: line 13: change "production" to "producing".
Response 3: We have changed "production" to "producing", in line 10.
Point 4: line 14: change "to" before the total.. to "of".
Response 4: We have changed "to" before the total.. to "of", in line 11.
Point 5: line 15: increased "by" around 821% from ...
Response 5: We have changed "by around 821%" instead of “about 821%” , in line 12.
Point 6: line 16: yield "to" the increase in production.
Response 6: We have changed “to” instead of “on” , in line 13.
Point 7: line 17" production function was "estimated".
Response 7: We have changed “estimated” instead of “formed” , in line 14.
Point 8: line 19: Do not have to repeat grain yield- just write yield.
Response 8: We have changed “grain yield” to “yield” in this paper.
Point 9: Make tables stand alone, do not have to mention IMAR everywhere in tables and figures.
Response 9: We have changed “IMAR” to “Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region” of tables and figures in this paper.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for taking the time to revise the manuscript. It appears that the authors put significant time and effort into improving the quality of writing. No further comments. Good luck
