Development and Prospect of Food Security Cooperation in the BRICS Countries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors analyse an interesting and up to date topic with a novel approach. BRICS countries' food security is of critical importance globally. However, there are a number of problems the authors should consider:

1. The methods&materials section needs to be reconsidered. What makes this research generalisable and repetible? Why exactly these indices are selected to construct the new coefficients?
2. Regarding the above, are there any correlation among the indices selected?
3. As to the strategic tightness coefficient, would this change by changing the experts/countries?
4. Regarding infrastructure, what about sea and air transportation?
5. Data used is some cases are quite old - 2013 was seven years ago!
6. How can we forecast anything to 2030? What is the model behind?
7. The discussion section should be extended with examples and stories on products explaining the relationships between different BRICS (soybean, sugar, wine, etc.)
8. Are there any policy conclusions or recommendations coming out of this story?

Author Response

Dear reviewer:

Thank you for your comments and suggestion, which give me more ideas to improve our paper. We have carried out a discussion about your comments and suggestion including methods, data, discussion, and made response one by one. Detailed modification, please see the attachment.

Kind regards,

Dr Ren

AII of CAAS

E-mail: [email protected]

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article submitted for the review covers topical issues such as food security and food self-sufficiency. Combinations of large interregional groups of countries, such as the BRICS, undoubtedly contribute to these goals. The article is well structured and very detailed. The authors covered a very broad topic and, as they themselves admitted at the end of the article, due to the limited scope of the article, not all research results were presented in detail in the study. The data is aggregated for the whole group of countries, so the country specifics are lost. Reading the article lacks deeper insights and specifics on where the BRICS countries should strengthen their cooperation, what are the suggested measures, in which agricultural sectors individual countries have a competitive advantage and a higher level of self-sufficiency, which countries has to take a leading role in which sector, etc. There is a lack of specific guidance on how to deepen cooperation between the analysed countries on these issues, and possible means to achieve this. It is understandable that the limitations of the scope of the article made it difficult to include all possible aspects of the study, which may indeed be a continuation of the study, but it is suggested to adjust the summary and part of the conclusions and discussions. The summary only partially reflects all the work done, and more emphasis should be placed on the research carried out and the results obtained. Meanwhile, parts of the conclusions and discussions need to be more specific so we clearly know what's on offer and stakeholders can readily take the necessary action after reading the article. It would also be good to insert a country specificity throughout the text and to highlight it.

Author Response

Dear reviewer:

Thank you for your comments and suggestion, which give me more ideas to improve this paper.

In the review comments, you pointed out that there was no effective analysis about BRICS countries' characteristics and targeted suggestions, and suggested to adjust the summary and part of the conclusions and discussion. We have carried out a discussion about your comments and suggestion which can be divided into three categories. Please see the attachment.

Kind regards,

Dr Ren

AII of CAAS

E-mail: [email protected]

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Referee Report on Manuscripts ID: Sustainability 733574

“Development and Prospect of Food Security Cooperation in BRICS”
This study investigates the current food security status in BRICS and proposes an index of food security cooperation to examine the prospect and path of food security cooperation between the BRICS member countries. I have several concerns, which I outline below:

1. 
   Re-write the materials and methods section. This section does not provide enough information to readers to understand the research methods of this study. I would suggest to rewrite this section under the assumption that readers have no idea about food security and food security indexes.
2. a) Page 3: Authors mentioned that there are three common consumption statistics methods include quota statistical method, flow direction statistical method and consumption statistical method. The authors use the flow direction statistical method. Please add the definition of each method and justification of using the flow direction statistical method.
   b) Page 3: “Based on the comparative advantage theory, resource endowment theory, the international division of labor theory, space interaction theory, as well as research on the measurement of agricultural cooperation potential by Cedrins and Zanella[32-33], this study proposes the potential coefficient and potential index of food security cooperation.” Big claim, I am not clear about this
   paragraph. Please explain how the above-mentioned theories are connected to your proposed potential coefficient and the potential index of food security cooperation.
   c) Pages 3 & 4: What are the differences between the potential index of food security cooperation and food security cooperation potential index.
   d) Page 4 (1st sentence): What do you mean by selected indicators? Any examples?
   2. Page 9. Section 3.3.2: Table 6 should be Table 4. How do you explain the potential coefficient value, for example, 0.014? Please add this.
   3. Page 9. Table 5: Are numbers in table 5 in terms of billion USD?
   4. Page 10: “This section may be divided by subheadings. It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn” This paragraph does not make sense? I think it’s a typo.
   5. Pages 10 & 11 (Sections: Discussion and Conclusion): Both discussion and conclusion may include the contribution of this study, the efficiency of the proposed index, how the proposed index help to quantify food security and food security cooperation status, and
   policy implications.
   6. Page 2: “There is less research on food security cooperation involving BRICS countries and few studies on the effectiveness and potential of BRICS food security cooperation by quantitative means.” Please include the results of studies (which focus on food security
   cooperation by quantitative means) in the introduction section.
   7. Please compare your proposed index of food security cooperation with other existing food security cooperation indexes and how your proposed index is better than the existing indexes.

Author Response

Dear reviewer:

Thank you for your comments and suggestion, which give me more ideas to improve our paper. We have carried out a discussion about your comments and suggestion including methods, discussion, and conclusion, and made response one by one. Please see the attachment for details.

Thank you again for your commtents.

Kind regards,

Dr Ren

AII of CAAS

E-mail: [email protected]

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The basic idea is interesting and interpreted well. I have only a few comments:

1, In the first formula, minus sign should be changed to an equal sign.

2, It would be better to use the same colour for the same trade relation in figure 2.

3, It is not clear how effects the low oil self-sufficiency rate the self-sufficiency rate of food in China (p.7.).

4, The moving average method does not take into account significant changes like the impact of the embargo on Russia. Russia has accepted a law on higher self-sufficiency and the minimum targets should be reached by 2020 (p.7.). It should be either implemented into the article or the limitations of the method should be mentioned.

Author Response

Dear reviewer:

Thank you for your comments and suggestion, which give me more ideas to improve our paper. We have carried out a discussion about your comments and suggestion and made response one by one. Deficted modification, please see the attachment.

Kind regards,

Dr Ren

AII of CAAS

E-mail: [email protected]

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I think the article is now ready for publication after the changes the authors have made.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you.

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.