Smart Farming Technologies in Arable Farming: Towards a Holistic Assessment of Opportunities and Risks
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
The subject of the revised article is current, original, and presents the opportunities and risks of Smart Farming (SF) for more ecological arable farming. It is to be appreciated that a holistic and environmental vision is adopted, with numerous examples obtained from experiments.
I appreciate the critical, detailed analysis regarding smart farming and also argued with 145 relevant publications from Web databases 97 of Science and Google Scholar.
This paper is composed of Abstract, Introduction, Materials and methods, critical discussions regarding opportunities of SF technologies, risks of SF technologies, discussion and Governance Implications, Conclusions and References.
It is to be appreciated the right choice of the arguments for practicing an intelligent agriculture as well as of the possible direct and indirect environmental risks.
The results presented are useful for the use of smart systems such as the Internet of Things, Big Data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and other technologies characterized as the fourth revolution in agricultural production. in breeding programs and in agricultural practice.
I would recommend that the results from some bibliographic sources such as publication 69 cited on page 7 are those on page 7 lines 295-298 be reviewed. I consider that the average corn yield was 13.1 kg / 297 ha in areas treated with sensors, and only 11.5 kg / ha in uniformly treated areas is not convincing.
I also think that some minor English style corrections would be useful, such as on page 6, lines 247 and 248. Another minor correction could be made to the title of the paper „SF technologies in arable farming: towards a holistic 2 assessments of opportunities and risks” instead of „SF technologies in arable farming: towards a holistic assessment of opportunities and risks”
I recommend the publication of the article “SF technologies in arable farming: towards a holistic assessment of opportunities and risks” elaborated by the authors Sebastian Lieder and Christoph Schröter-Schlaack.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments and remarks, which have contributed to a significant improvement of the article. We have addressed all the points you raised in detail. For our detailed responses to your comments, please see the table attached.
Best regards,
Sebastian Lieder
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript presents mainly the point of view of authors on modern technical methods supporting agriculture. The content of the manuscript is debatable, largely based on a review of conclusions from scientific articles cited in the references. The authors did not carry out any own economic or socioeconomic analysis, even based on data from the literature cited, there are no tables, charts, for example the costs of using IT techniques.
Notes concerning the editorial side of the manuscript:
- The title should be correct - the title should include the full name of Smart Farming, the abbreviation SF is not so widely used, that every reader knows what the article is about. The title must clearly inform about the content of the article, the more that the authors only in Introduction, in line 63 explain the concept of Smart Farming.
- Too often the wording Smart Farming and the acronym SF are used in the text, it should be remembered that the term Precision Farming is also equivalent to Smart Farming and may be used interchangeably.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments and remarks, which have contributed to a significant improvement of the article. We have addressed all the points you raised in detail. For our detailed responses to your comments, please see the table attached.
Best regards,
Sebastian Lieder
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
In my opinion the work is very well written and scientifically sound, it offers a valuable overview of some of the issues connected to the use of smart farming today. Here are just some minor issues that I think, if addressed, could make the article even better.
Specific remarks:
Title: I would suggest avoiding the use of acronym in the title
Line 64: I am not sure if manufacturers is the right term to use here. Who are the manufacturers here farmers, producers of equipment for farming, technology developers? Maybe it would be better to develop this a bit more in detail.
Line 73-78: A lot of works focus on the implementation of SF in traditional agriculture in order to diminish the negative effects, and much of them cite the technology cost, low knowledge about the SF and the reluctance of farmers to implement new technologies as some of the problems for SF adoption. Maybe this paragraph could be slightly modified taking this into account.
Line 339-340: I would suggest also mentioning the models for weed emergence prediction that could be used to decide the best time for surveys or treatments, and that could help with the shortage of time for weed detection as rightfully said by the authors.
Line 482: I fully agree on the negative effects indicated here, but in which way do they have low efficiency? Both tractors trailed harvesters and combine harvesters are very efficient when it comes to harvesting crops, especially the modern ones. Are the authors referring to cost/benefits/environmental damage efficiency or something else? Maybe a few more words concerning this could better this part.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments, questions and remarks, which have contributed to a significant improvement of the article. We have addressed all the points you raised in detail. For our detailed responses to your comments, please see the table attached.
Best regards,
Sebastian Lieder
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
