Evaluation of Environmental and Economic Performance of Crop Production in Relation to Crop Rotation, Catch Crops, and Tillage

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study conducted has provided sufficient data to support the relevant findings and objectives. However, there are several areas that need improvement. The figure quality should be enhanced, and the description of the results section should be simplified to focus specifically on the findings related to the objectives. Additionally, the introduction and discussion sections would benefit from the inclusion of more references from the relevant research field.

 

There are some issues with the reference formats, so please ensure they are corrected. Also, consider adding necessary references in the introduction section. One relevant paper to consider is titled "Management practices during the renewal year affect the carbon balance of a boreal legume grassland." Another paper to consider is titled "Designing productive, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly production systems by replacing fallow period with annual forage cultivation on the Loess Plateau of China."

 

Furthermore, please ensure that the y-axis in the figures includes appropriate units, and consider adding necessary statistical analysis information to the plots.

Moderate editing of English language required.

Author Response

Dear Sir/ Madam,

Thank you for your time to review our manuscript and for providing constructive feedback.

We have considered all of your comments and suggestions and we have implemented the necessary revisions based on your recommendations and the comments of other reviewers. The changes are highlighted in the revised manuscript: the structural changes are marked with grey colour and corrected text is marked by red colour.

Additionally, it is necessary to retain section 3.3.2 from the original manuscript in the revised version (now included within section 3.5.) This section is important as it provides findings from the field trials that are crucial for the evaluation both the environmental and economic performance of catch crops. Also, the literature analysis provides arguments for making better decisions regarding the selection of the most appropriate catch crop mixtures for practical implementation on Latvian farms.

We sincerely appreciate your efforts in helping us to improve the quality of our paper.

Ieva Leimane
on behalf of the authors

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is too lengthy and lacks emphasis on key points.  So i suggest the author to simplify article content. Bessides, some suggestions are shown as below:

1. Suggest the author change "environemntal performance" to NUE in the title, because the NUE is more appropriate. The indicator of NUE can not be responsible to environmental performance.

2. The section of 3.3.2 has no relation to this article, I suggest the author to delete this section. 

3. The economic performace of catch crops should be discussed in results.

4.  The description for rotation, tillage, and catch crops should be moved to materials and methods, or listed as supplementary.

5. The latin name shoul be given at the first time, suggest the author adjust the description in Line 139-147.

6. The author need to explain why soil nitrogen content were not considered.

7. The survey form should be given as appendix for the confusing calculations for economic performance.

 

The english is good.

Author Response

Dear Sir/ Madam,

Thank you for your time to review our manuscript and for providing constructive feedback.

We have considered all of your comments and suggestions and we have implemented the necessary revisions based on your recommendations and the comments of other reviewers. The changes are highlighted in the revised manuscript: the structural changes are marked with grey colour and corrected text is marked by red colour.

Regarding the title of the article and its length, we would prefer to retain our original version. In kind response to your concerns, we would like to draw your attention that in the M&M section, there is an explanation as to why we consider NUE as a relevant and topical indicator for environmental performance within the context of this article. Also, according to the technical screening criteria proposed by the Platform on Sustainable Finance, NUE will highly likely become a key criterion to assess substantial contribution to environmental objectives laid out by the Taxonomy Regulation in the EU. So, NUE is a significant indicator of environmental sustainability and, thus, measures environmental performance.

Additionally, it is necessary to retain section 3.3.2 from the original manuscript in the revised version (now included within section 3.5.) This section is important as it provides findings from the field trials that are crucial for the evaluation both the environmental and economic performance of catch crops. Also, the literature analysis provides arguments for making better decisions regarding the selection of the most appropriate catch crop mixtures for practical implementation on Latvian farms.

 

We sincerely appreciate your efforts in helping us to improve the quality of our paper.

Ieva Leimane

on behalf of the authors

Reviewer 3 Report

1.       What are the “specific” objectives of this study and what were the hypotheses at least for the field trials of this study?

2.       This manuscript does not describe its case study experimental designs sufficiently enough. Either describe how many farms were under which practice for how many years or present it in a table or supplementary information. Which crops the farms were growing in which year seem like a necessary information too. For the cover crop trials, it is unclear whether the cover crop treatments were compared to any bare fallow controls.

3.        Lines (313-325) Is this the result from literature review? If so, and if this does not belong to the Introduction, the authors should clearly cite the figure or table that this information is relevant to.

4.       Line 376. What was the alpha for the confidence interval?

5.       Table 5-8. Field name designation is never explained in the M&M section. Overall, it is very difficult to connect which result is relevant to which part of the study in this manuscript.

6.       Figure 6. What is the asterisk after phacelia for? This is never explained in the figure nor the description. Also, the bar graph colors are too similar between the two fields. It may be better to unify their colors with the points.

7.       Figure 7. How was this results determined? The method used does not seem to have been explained in the M&M section.

While the English grammar was acceptable, the paragraphing in this manuscript is very poor. The authors should improve how the information is grouped into paragraphs. One sentence paragraph is unacceptable. 

Author Response

Dear Sir/ Madam,

Thank you for your time to review our manuscript and for providing constructive feedback.

We have considered all of your comments and suggestions and we have implemented the necessary revisions based on your recommendations and the comments of other reviewers. The changes are highlighted in the revised manuscript: the structural changes are marked with grey colour and corrected text is marked by red colour.

We sincerely appreciate your efforts in helping us to improve the quality of our paper.

Ieva Leimane

on behalf of the authors