Coordinated Development of Farmland Transfer and Labor Migration in China: Spatio-Temporal Evolution and Driving Factors
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
Comment 1: I think the introduction is too much, and the author should cut it down to two-thirds of what it is now. In addition, I think a lot of content in this part is a typical Chinese-style paper writing style. Such clichés do not conform to the writing habits of English papers and should be deleted directly.
Comment 2: In the introduction, the author spends a lot of space introducing the background and significance of the study, which I think is unnecessary. Instead, emphasis should be placed on the research gap, the novelty of the study, and the main conclusions.
Comment 3: Research objectives should be placed in the introduction section. The content of the conclusion section should correspond to the research objectives.
Comment 4: Do not cite any Chinese papers; use relevant English papers instead.
The manuscript, in my opinion, is fascinating for readers of the journal. The authors had a good idea for a research project. The subject is relevant, the analytical methodologies are adequate, and the volume of data seems to be enough for publication. Therefore, I have no hesitation in recommending publication after revising the above issue.
Author Response
Dear Editor, Dear reviewer,
We sincerely thank the reviewer for thoroughly examining our manuscript and providing very helpful comments to guide our revision. We have tried our best to revise the manuscript according to your construction comments.
Comment 1: I think the introduction is too much, and the author should cut it down to two-thirds of what it is now. In addition, I think a lot of content in this part is a typical Chinese-style paper writing style. Such clichés do not conform to the writing habits of English papers and should be deleted directly.
Response 1: The reviewer is correct, we have shortened the first paragraph of the introduction to about two thirds of its original length and edited it so our ideas related to the coordinated development of farmland transfer and labor migration are more clearly expressed (Lines34-71, page 1-2).
Comment 2: In the introduction, the author spends a lot of space introducing the background and significance of the study, which I think is unnecessary. Instead, emphasis should be placed on the research gap, the novelty of the study, and the main conclusions.
Response 2: Thank you very much for these comments about our paper. Modified throughout the introduction according to the comment (Lines 137-169, page3). The precedent version of the introduction has been revised to highlight the research gaps, the novelty of the study, and research objectives.
Comment 3: Research objectives should be placed in the introduction section. The content of the conclusion section should correspond to the research objectives.
Response 3: Thank you for this comment and suggestion. In this revision, we have further polished the research objectives of the introduction section of the manuscript (Lines 156-164, page 3), and as far as possible to keep the consistency of the research content and research objectives.
Comment 4: Do not cite any Chinese papers; use relevant English papers instead.
Response 4: We agree with this suggestion and have deleted the quoted Chinese papers (Original manuscript: 1-2, 6-8, 39-42, 44), used English papers related to the research (Revised manuscript: 15-16, 27, 32, 38-47).
We would like to thank the referee again for taking the time to review our manuscript.
Sincerely.
Liu Guoyong
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Abstract:
1. Introduction
-the first sentence seems to be a propagandistic one. Please, reformulate it.
-lines 50-58 = the readers are not familiarised with terms such as the household registration system, the rural land system, ownership rights, dominant groups of agricultural operations, contractors' rights and land management rights. What all these mean from the lens of Chinese society and economy ??
-lines 67-73 = there are mentioned some questions which not mentioned by the author as being ,,research question,,, but only ,,questions,, .
-lines 93-94 = number of household labor forces, the ratio of labor forces employed in concurrent employment to household labor forces. What are the significances of these indicators ? What means number of household labor forces ? there is labour force with no salary or what ? The readers don’t know . What did concurrent employment means ? Maybe the correct term is concomitant ??
-beginning with line 127 the author seems to highlight the aims of this paper but they are not very well underlined. E.g. the formulation Therefore, this study measured the CCD of FT 127 and LM in 30 provinces/ autonomous regions/ municipalities … would be better reformulated for lighting the aim of the study. E.g.: ,,this study aims to measured the CCD of FT 127 and LM in 30 provinces/ autonomous regions/ municipalities…,,. The paragraph with these aims is quite long and the phrase is not well structured for highlighting them.
-line 129 = in China from 2015 to 2019 by constructing an evaluation index system….- the time between 2015 and 2019 is sufficient for concluding some ideas about your research topic ? the authors should weigh this aspect carefully. Even the author affirm that From a temporal perspective, due to the long-term and complex nature of the evolution trend of FT and LM, the evolution trend of FT and LM in China from 2015 to 2019 is not obvious due to the influence of agricultural production conditions, the development of non-agricultural industries and new urbanization, and its evolution trend is relatively stable (lines 342-345).
2. Materials and Methods
-lines 144-146 = What means, in very general terms (average surfaces, urban and rural population, GDP, etc.), a Chinese province ? the reader should be as familiar as possible with the territorial "entities" used in this study, with its territorial, demographic, economic size and ,,power,,. In other words, we would like to see a short section dedicated to your study-area, namely the 30 provinces in China as the research units.
-we have no critical opinions on your methodological section but there are some aspect unclear. E.g.: in Table 1, the indicators The percentage of food crops planted is not completely defined. The % of total of what ? Other indicators are correctly defined, e.g. The percentage of households that have been relocated compared to the total number of households.
-Other indicators are totally unclear in our opinion, they having no measure unit and a short definition/description E.g.: The level of agricultural equipment.
3. Results
-well structured and written but repeating abbreviations is annoying. The text doesn’t flows in a pleasant and facile way for the readers.
4. Discussion
-lines 346 – 356 = our opinion is that this phrase is more appropriate to be included in Introduction section.
Comments for author File: Comments.docx
Author Response
Dear Editor, Dear reviewer,
Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. We really appreciate all your comments and suggestions! The responses to the comments are given below.
Comment 1: the first sentence seems to be a propagandistic one. Please, reformulate it.
Response 1: Thank you for this comment, it has been adopted (Lines 34-36, page 1).
Comment 2: lines 50-58 = the readers are not familiarised with terms such as the household registration system, the rural land system, ownership rights, dominant groups of agricultural operations, contractors' rights and land management rights. What all these mean from the lens of Chinese society and economy ??
Response 2: We are very grateful to your comments for the manuscript. Our reply is as follows: according to the comments of the reviewers, we found that the introduction was indeed a typical Chinese writing style, in the revision of the manuscript, we cut out most of this style (this part was also deleted), and asked research questions more directly (Lines 54-63, page 2).
Comment 3: lines 67-73 = there are mentioned some questions which not mentioned by the author as being ,,research question,,, but only ,,questions,, .
Response 3: Thank you for your precious comments and advice. This comment is valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. The introduction was indeed lacking a clear statement of the research question of the study. The lines 161-173 have been inserted describing the research question of this study.
Comment 4: lines 93-94 = number of household labor forces, the ratio of labor forces employed in concurrent employment to household labor forces. What are the significances of these indicators ? What means number of household labor forces ? there is labour force with no salary or what ? The readers don’t know . What did concurrent employment means ? Maybe the correct term is concomitant ??
Response 4: This was our oversight. We have revised the manuscript and illustrate the implications represented by these indicators (Lines 102-106, page 3).
Comment 5: -beginning with line 127 the author seems to highlight the aims of this paper but they are not very well underlined. E.g. the formulation Therefore, this study measured the CCD of FT 127 and LM in 30 provinces/ autonomous regions/ municipalities … would be better reformulated for lighting the aim of the study. E.g.: ,,this study aims to measured the CCD of FT 127 and LM in 30 provinces/ autonomous regions/ municipalities…,,. The paragraph with these aims is quite long and the phrase is not well structured for highlighting them.
Response 5: The reviewers are correct, the introduction should be more specific about the research objectives. In this revision, we have further polished the research objectives of the manuscript, and some of the long sentences and phrase were modified for lighting the aim of the study (Lines 165-173, page 4).
Comment 6: line 129 = in China from 2015 to 2019 by constructing an evaluation index system….- the time between 2015 and 2019 is sufficient for concluding some ideas about your research topic ? the authors should weigh this aspect carefully. Even the author affirm that From a temporal perspective, due to the long-term and complex nature of the evolution trend of FT and LM, the evolution trend of FT and LM in China from 2015 to 2019 is not obvious due to the influence of agricultural production conditions, the development of non-agricultural industries and new urbanization, and its evolution trend is relatively stable (lines 342-345).
Response 6: We appreciate the reviewer’s suggestion on this issue. The discussion regarding this question is presented following: On the one hand, this study has only available continuous statistics from 2015-2019, we raise this question in the limitations of our study, but the current data, although limited, clearly demonstrates the feasibility of this approach. On the other hand, the comments presented by the reviewers in lines 342–345 are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. After careful consideration, we have corrected this inappropriate expression (Lines 410-411, page 15).
Comment 7: -lines 144-146 = What means, in very general terms (average surfaces, urban and rural population, GDP, etc.), a Chinese province ? the reader should be as familiar as possible with the territorial "entities" used in this study, with its territorial, demographic, economic size and ,,power,,. In other words, we would like to see a short section dedicated to your study-area, namely the 30 provinces in China as the research units.
Response 7: Thank you for underlining this deficiency. In the revised version of the manuscript we add a section dedicated to the study area. Around the research content, this part focus on the level of farmland transfer and labor migration in 30 provinces of China (Lines 193-212, page 4-5).
Comment 8: we have no critical opinions on your methodological section but there are some aspect unclear. E.g.: in Table 1, the indicators The percentage of food crops planted is not completely defined. The % of total of what ? Other indicators are correctly defined, e.g. The percentage of households that have been relocated compared to the total number of households.
Other indicators are totally unclear in our opinion, they having no measure unit and a short definition/description E.g.: The level of agricultural equipment.
Response 8: That was an oversight on our part. To address this issue, we added the description of the indicators in Table 1. (page 5-7).
Comment 9: well structured and written but repeating abbreviations is annoying. The text doesn’t flows in a pleasant and facile way for the readers.
Response 9: We apologize for repeating abbreviations of our manuscript, but we want to continue using abbreviations, both to improve the concision of the articles and avoid duplication with previously published articles.
Comment 10: lines 346 – 356 = our opinion is that this phrase is more appropriate to be included in Introduction section.
Response 10: Thank you for the suggestion, and we want to show that in the modification of the introduction, we have deleted a lot of tedious expressions in order to highlight the research question, after the team discussion, the content of lines 346-356, we hope to still be placed in this part.
We sincerely hope that this revised manuscript has addressed all your comments and suggestions. We appreciated for reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Sincerely.
Liu Guoyong
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for your revision.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments for author File: Comments.docx
