The Influence of Converting Food Crops to Forage Crops Policy Implementation on Herbivorous Livestock Husbandry Development—Based on Policy Pilot Counties in Hebei, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

a. Variation of policy's effects and changed trends needs further discussion.

b. A bit scientific concern is about whether pilot counties are enough to study for such kind of policy implication related research issues?

c. Discussion needs further concrete to prove whether small-scale farmers will be equally benefitted from this study

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

We would like to resubmit the revised manuscript entitled “Analyzing the Impact of the CFFP's Implementation on the Growth of Herbivorous Animal Husbandry” (agriculture-1987521). We would like to thank the reviewers for thoroughly reviewing our manuscript and making many thoughtful comments. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portions are marked using the “Track Changes” function in the paper and we also reworked the graphs, including Figure 2 to Figure 10. The main corrections in the paper and the responses please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I am not sure if using the acronym CFFP in the title of the article is a good solution. If the acronym is not widely known and used, it could be a potential obstacle for many readers to understand what the material is about by the title. Maybe it is worth expanding this abbreviation to a full name and limiting the number of other terms in the title so that the title of the article is not too long.

I don't know if asking a question in the Abstract is the right approach in this part of the article. Instead of asking a question (lines: 14-16), maybe it is worth formulating the issue in the form of a sentence that will present the purpose of the research / study. I did not find a clearly formulated research / study goal in the Abstract, so there is an opportunity to write what the research / study goal is.

At the end of the Introduction chapter, the Authors wrote about the scope of the research work performed. However, I did not find in this part of the article a clearly formulated research / study goal. I suggest writing the sentence "The aim of the research / study was ...". Moreover, when formulating the research goal (s), it would be worth writing down what was the cognitive (scientific) goal and what was the utilitarian (useful) goal. Before stating the purpose of the work, it would be worth formulating the research problem. I think that a research problem can be formulated without any problems on the basis of the review of the state of knowledge presented in the Introduction to the article. I suggest that in the summary of the state of knowledge review simply write the sentence: "The research problem is ...". In addition, the research problem can be related to the presentation of a gap in the current state of knowledge.

In the main body of the article, the first-time CFFP acronym was not explained in its full name (line: 68). This acronym (CFFP) was previously used in the keywords and in the Abstract, but its explanation there is insufficient. Therefore, I suggest that you complete the full CFFP name in line 68.

Instead of the word essay (lines: 74, 149 and 164) the word “study” could be used, which would better correspond to the form of the presented research results.

I don't know what the "i's" on line 175 means. I guess it needs some correction.

In lines 151-152 the Authors mentioned the use of index of production concentration. Nowhere in the article have I found information about the interpretation of this indicator and how it is calculated. Please complete this information in the article. Where in the article can I find the results of the analysis based on the use of the index of production concentration?

On line 250, the authors used the phrase "mu". What does this phrase mean, because I did not find its explanation in the article.

I do not know what the authors meant by the phrase "planting atmosphere". I think this is a mental shortcut that would be worth explaining in more detail or changing it.

The sentence in lines 270-273 would be worth re-writing so that it does not end with the phrase "was not", because it is probably not correct.

In Figures 2a and 2b, the Authors took into account the (y) scale for "Herbivore" on the ordinate axis. There are numbers on the y-axis, but I don't know in which units "Herbivore" is expressed. Please complete this information in the Figures and the text. In general, the authors have used the word "herbivore" only twice in the text, in the phrase "herbivore livestock", on lines 449 and 451 (Conclusions). In my opinion, this concept (herbivore livestock) should be taken into account when discussing Figures 2a and 2b.

In Figure 3, the authors included the scale for "Beef" on the ordinate (y). There are numerical values ​​on the y-axis, but I don't know in which units "Beef" is expressed. Please complete this information in the Figure and the text.

In Figures 4a and 4b, the Authors have included the scale (y) for "Sheep" on the ordinate axis. There are numbers on the y-axis, but I don't know in which units "Sheep" is expressed. Please complete this information in the Figures and the text.

In Figures 5a and 5b, the authors included the scale (y) for "Concentration" on the ordinate axis. There are numerical values ​​on the y-axis, but I don't know in which units "Concentration" is expressed. Please complete this information in the Figures and the text. The word "Concentration" was used by the authors in the text of the article 16 times. However, nowhere have I found information on how "concentration" is understood and interpreted, the more so as this word is used in various contexts in many places in the article.

In Figure 6, the axes of abscissa (x) and ordinate (y) are not described at all. Of course, the values ​​on the x-axis can be guessed, but the y-axis is a complete mystery. It is true that the caption under Figure informs about what is in the drawing, but the scale on the ordinate axis (y) is not clear to me. If the same figure (Figure 6) shows the course of changes "... livestock production" and "... industrial concentration", it means that "production" and "concentration" are given in the same units. In my opinion, production and concentration are completely different indicators, and using the same scale on the ordinate (y) for these indicators is very problematic and questionable.

I have one more remark regarding Figure 6. In this Figure, the authors used the term "industrial concentration". Nowhere in the text have I found any information on how the Authors interpret the word "industrial" in conjunction with "concentration". Lack of explanation (interpretation) regarding various indicators, including "industrial concentration", causes a lot of confusion while reading the article.

I have comments - as in the case of previous Figures - regarding the description of the axis also in the case of Figure 11. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

We would like to resubmit the revised manuscript entitled “Analyzing the Impact of the CFFP's Implementation on the Growth of Herbivorous Animal Husbandry” (agriculture-1987521). We would like to thank the reviewers for thoroughly reviewing our manuscript and making many thoughtful comments. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portions are marked using the “Track Changes” function in the paper and we also reworked the graphs, including Figure 2 to Figure 10. The main corrections in the paper and the responses please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for taking into account the suggestions, changes and corrections presented in the review. 

Author Response

Thank you again for your suggestions and response.