Study on the Coupling System of Grain-Grass-Livestock of Herbivorous Animal Husbandry in Agricultural Areas: A Case Study of Najitun Farm of Hulunbuir Agricultural Reclamation in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The title: This study was conducted in a specific study area it should be more interesting to add the study area in the title. 

The introduction section should be summarized. The authors should focus especially on the problem of the study and expose some hypotheses.

Data sources: The authors explored data sources based on the Agricultural Reclamation long-term baseline survey of Najitun Farm and from the statistical annual report of the Ministry of Finance ( 2016-2019 ) and other official documents.  The authors didn't give any information about these explored sources and their reliability.

It is surprising that the authors added the discussion section to the conclusion. The Authors should discuss the results in a separates section (discussion section).

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

 

Dear reviewer,

We would like to thank the reviewer1 for thoroughly reviewing our manuscript and making many thoughtful comments. We have added significant new data material appendixes, described in detail below. And revised the manuscript to address reviewers1’s comments. In the text, the words marked in blue are the added words. Here are our point-by-point responses.

 

Point 1: Title. This study was conducted in a specific study area it should be more interesting to add the study area in the title.

 

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestion. The study area added to the title, and has been changed to “Study on the Coupling System of Grain-Grass-Livestock of Herbivorous Animal Husbandry in Agricultural Areas: A Case Study of Najitun Farm of Hulunbuir Agricultural Reclamation in China”.

 

Point 2: Introduction. The introduction section should be summarized. The authors should focus especially on the problem of the study and expose some hypotheses.

 

Response 2: Thank you for your suggestion. Your suggestions are important. For this reason, with reference to other studies, we present the focus of attention in this study in the paragraphs in lines 75-76. And some hypotheses are shown in the paragraphs of lines 62-64. The hypotheses of the model are in lines 386-429. We hope that this revision can be approved by you.

 

Point 3: Data sources. The authors explored data sources based on the Agricultural Reclamation long-term baseline survey of Najitun Farm and from the statistical annual report of the Ministry of Finance (2016-2019) and other official documents.  The authors didn't give any information about these explored sources and their reliability.

 

Response 3: Thank you for your suggestion. This stems from a misunderstanding in translation. The data comes from Hulunbuir Agricultural Reclamation's finance department and not from China's Ministry of Finance. We have corrected this misrepresentation. In addition, in this previous round of revisions, we have provided the relevant data information in the annex. Now, we consult with Hulunbuir Agricultural Reclamation Group to provide data from its financial department (2016-2019).

 

Point 4: Discussion. The Authors should discuss the results in a separates section (discussion section).

Response 4: Thank you for your suggestion. In addition, in the last revision, we revised the discussion part and discussed the results again. In this revision, we have separated the discussion part just like lines 825 -845.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors of the study "Study on the Coupling System of Grain-Grass-Livestock of Herbivorous Animal Husbandry in Agricultural Areas" present a relevant topic, namely "The development of herbivorous animal husbandry", an aspect that is found in the economies of all states, especially those with economies. mountain, which makes the work have the effect of multiplying both in the context of pasture biodiversity, but especially on food safety and security and in the context of the solution proposed by the authors of the work "the development of herbivores as a constraint ”.

The bibliographic sources, citations, concepts and hypotheses established in the study are appropriately used by the authors of the research. Specifically, those that show that "the breeding of herbivores in China is a product of China's economic development stage, and the results of related research appeared gradually after 2015 [25], which shows the study of the authors with the applicative orientation of the results research conducted at the level of the Najitun case area.

The research methodology is simplistically presented. The authors of the research used data from studies such as "Integration of agriculture and animal husbandry, circular development". Moreover, the model proposed by the authors is "the flow diagram of the herbivore development system for animal husbandry in agricultural areas was made by VENSIM DSS software".

The research results are presented by the authors of the research based on the scenarios, respectively in “scenario 1 represents the tendency to develop inertia of the initial parameters of the model, scenario 2 represents the strategy of extending the scale of breeding herbivorous animals, and scenario 3 represents the optimization strategy of the structure of the planting industry after the expansion of the herbivorous animal husbandry”. As we suggested in the previous evaluation, we ask the authors of the research to highlight the main scientific results as a personal contribution to the scientific literature, given that the results are adequately presented but much focused on the application side and can create a multiplier effect other economies, especially those in the mountainous area globally.

The conclusions are presented by the authors of the research, respectively the authors emphasize that “long-term cooperation between the institute and the local administration, taking the Najitun farm as a case area to re-seek the strategy of developing herbivorous livestock in agriculture. The structure of the system, the production chain, the basic data, the technical parameters of the process, and the development objectives are all from field research and interviews”. Furthermore, we suggest that the study authors also present the limitations of the study. The authors of the paper highlighted the continuation of future research based on historical data and in continuous updating. However, as we mentioned in the results chapter, we appreciate that the personal scientific results that contribute to the scientific literature should be highlighted.

We congratulate the research team, we suggest the revision of the paper according to the above mentioned, and after the revision we propose for acceptance the paper.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

 

Dear reviewer,

We would like to thank the reviewer2 for thoroughly reviewing our manuscript and making many thoughtful comments. And revised the manuscript to address reviewers2’s comments. In the text, the words marked in blue are the added words. Here are our point-by-point responses.

 

Point 1: We ask the authors of the research to highlight the main scientific results as a personal contribution to the scientific literature.

 

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestion. Your suggestions have greatly enhanced this study. Based on your suggestions we focus on the main scientific findings in the conclusion section. As stated in the paragraphs lines 820-823, the main scientific result of this study is to reveal the importance of cultivate grass in cultivated land and to show that optimizing the grain-cash-grass crop structure is the path to achieving the development of herbivorous animal husbandry in agricultural areas. The academic contribution of this study is stated in the abstract, as stated in lines 36-37, that is, this study has important theoretical and practical significance for expanding the industrial space and building a new type of planting-breeding relationship. Thank you again for your support and recognition of this study. I hope this revision will be approved by you.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have answered most of the comments raised during the first review round. 

However, a comment was not properly addressed.
The discussion section should be moved after the results section. In addition, in the presented discussion, the authors don't discuss the results based on the literature.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

 

Point 1: Discussion. The discussion section should be moved after the results section. In addition, in the presented discussion, the authors don't discuss the results based on the literature.

 

Response 1: We appreciate you providing suggestions for our study. Referring to other articles published in Land, we have revised the discussion section. The discussion section is now divided into four paragraphs that summarize the work done in our study, discuss the results based on the original article and reference literature, and present the contributions and limitations of our study. The study now appears to be improved and perfect. The revised sections have been marked with the “Track Changes” function. We hope that this revision will be approved by you.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

No comment

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The scientific soundness of this paper is poor it lacks the scientific evidence needed to support its hypothesis.

The manuscript should be organized into separate sections as presented in the authors' guidelines: Material and Methods, Results, and Discussion sections.

 

Introduction:

The introduction section should be summarized. The authors should focus especially on the problem of the study and expos some hypotheses.

 

Study area:

It would be suitable to present the study area on a map.

The information about the non-selected farm should be summarized in a Table (coordinate, UAA, type of agriculture activity... ...etc.).

The authors should be more convincing about the reason for the selected Najitun Farm.

 

Data sources:

The authors explored data sources based on the Agricultural Reclamation long-term baseline survey of Najitun Farm, and from the statistical annual report of the Ministry of Finance ( 2016-2019 ) and other official documents.  The authors didn't give any information about these explored sources and their reliability.

 

Research methods

213 to 218 and 220 to 225: Repeated paragraph!

The used research method lacks justification of choice, scientific evidence, and reference.

 

Model operation and simulation

The obtained and presented simulation results are simple and lack scientific evidence.

 

Discussion

The results are weakly discussed.

 

Conclusion:

It is surprising that the authors added the discussion section to the conclusion.

What is the implication of this study?

 

References

Only 40 used references?

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors of the paper "Development system design and strategy optimization of herbivorous animal husbandry in agricultural areas" present a relevant topic, namely "The development of herbivorous animal husbandry", an aspect that is found in the economies of all states, especially those with mountain economy, which makes that the work has a multiplier effect both in the context of pasture biodiversity, but especially on food safety and security.

The bibliographic sources, citations, concepts and hypotheses established in the study are appropriately used by the authors of the research. Specifically, those that show that "the breeding of herbivores in China is a product of China's economic development stage, and the results of related research appeared gradually after 2015 [25], which shows the study of the authors with the applicative orientation of the results research conducted at the level of the Najitun case area.

The research methodology is simplistically presented. The authors of the research used data from studies such as "Integration of agriculture and animal husbandry, circular development". Moreover, the model proposed by the authors is "the flow chart of the herbivore development system for animal husbandry in agricultural areas was made by VENSIM DSS software".

The research results are presented by the authors of the research based on the scenarios, respectively in “scenario 1 represents the tendency to develop inertia of the initial parameters of the model, scenario 2 represents the strategy of extending the scale of breeding herbivorous animals, and scenario 3 represents the optimization strategy of the structure of the planting industry after the expansion of the herbivorous animal husbandry”. However, we suggest to the authors of the research to highlight the main scientific results as a personal contribution to the scientific literature, given that the results are adequately presented but much focused on the application side and can create a multiplier effect in other economies, especially those from the mountainous area globally.

The conclusions are presented by the authors of the research, respectively the authors emphasize that “long-term cooperation between the institute and the local administration, taking the Najitun farm as a case area to re-seek the strategy of developing herbivorous livestock in agriculture. The structure of the system, the production chain, the basic data, the technical parameters of the process, and the development objectives are all from field research and interviews”. Furthermore, we suggest that the authors of the study present the limitations of the study, including more clearly the involvement in future research. Moreover, as we mentioned in the results chapter, we appreciate that the personal scientific results that contribute to the scientific literature should be highlighted.

We congratulate the research team, we suggest the revision of the paper according to the above mentioned, and after the revision we propose for acceptance the paper.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear author(s),

this manuscript brings some inspiring insights. However, in its current stage its communication is not ready for an international audience of readers.

 

Title:

• turn the main discovery into a short claim

Abstract:

• follow the established schema of writing academic Abstract: A/ motivation + research hypothesis; B/ methods + results; C/ conclusions and interdisciplinary implications
• better address our international audience of readers, make sure the manuscript is not limited to China
• there are some inspiring insights thorough the manuscript, however, it is hard to find something new or unexpected in the Abstract, highlight the scientific novelty and quantify the economic importance of your discovery (clarify how will humanity benefit from your work)

Introduction:

• the manuscript should be adapted to global audience, do not refer to any local policies (make sure your findings are internationally applicable)
• deeper review the latest trends in agriculture
• make sure the Introduction chapter fulfills its purpose (all the abbreviations, symbols and terminology used in the following chapters needs to be fully explained)
• write more technically (always provide corresponding numbers) and be more straightforward (condensate your text, remove ballast phrases and cliche)
• explain the significance and and urgency of the research hypotheses (from global point of view)

Methodology:

• our readers should find here (only and exclusively) detailed description of all your procedures (step by step), describe (in detail) each method used, anybody who reads this chapter should be able to repeat your methods and obtain exactly the same results
• methods must be described to be reproducible by anyone, anywhere, at any time; do not refer to specific locations or create similar barriers that make reviewability difficult
• consider providing some cost breakdown or at least some simplified financial analysis if you want to argue that this work is not purely theoretical, this will provide arguments about cost competitiveness
• never communicate in local currency, use only € or $ and note that anytime you mention any price you should provide corresponding date to allow subsequent calculations on currency exchange and in(de)flation, refer to paper

Results:

• make sure the results are presented separately

Discussion:

• check for technical mistakes like "Error! Reference source not 771
  found."
• each Fig. and Tab. should be provided with detailed caption that will explain A/ what can be seen; B/ why is it important and C/ how is it related to the research hypothesis
• show more self-criticism to your methods, discuss all limitations of your results
• discuss where do the main measurement inaccuracies arise? are there any barriers to commercializing your findings? what are they and how to overcome them?
• take your research to the next level, provide a deeper synthesis of your results and reveal the mechanisms that shape them, this will allow you to uncover original theoretical insights

Conclusions:

• conclusion is not the same as summary of your work (do not repeat your methods and results again and again), make sure you are presenting only new theoretical findings that originate firstly from your work and are not deducible from other literature
• clearly indicate whether your research hypothesis tends to be confirmed or not, highlight/quantify the industrial/environmental significance