Review Reports - Climate-Smart Agriculture: Sleeping Beauty of the Hungarian Agribusiness

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Title: Climate-Smart Agriculture: Sleeping Beauty of the Hungarian Agribusiness

Abstract: This section is well written and captures the entire study.
Line 11-12: Please try to make the statement concise
Line 14-15: "tools that appear at Hungarian agribusiness" Unclear statement. Could you please clarify?

Introduction:
Line 29: “and its environmentally unsustainable fact is confirmed by several documents” could be changed to “its effect on environmental sustainability”
Although the section is well written, I suggest adding some texts on what necessitated the study and the expected outcome at the latter part.

Materials and Methods: This section did not cover concrete activities taken. Texts describing activities taken such as line 318-325, 327-332, etc
Line 124-127: Could you please shorten the statement?
Line 151-316: Titled Theoretical background; I suggest it should be incorporated in the discussion section to compare with the outcome of the study.
Discussion: The paper is poorly discussed. I suggest this section is thoroughly revised and compare the outcome of this study with other similar studies
I also suggest a conclusion section is added and some recommendations made.
In general, the topic of the study is good and was interesting reading it. Clearly, per the content of the manuscript, the authors did a lot of research. However, the information was not well arranged.
I suggest a thorough revision per the comments raised and English revision to make the paper comprehensible and appealing for readers.

Author Response

We would like to thank you for the careful and thorough reading of the manuscript titled “Climate-Smart Agriculture: sleeping beauty of the Hungarian agribusiness”, and for the thoughtful comments, constructive suggestions, which help to improve the quality of the paper. We have provide the point-by-point responses to your comments in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Climate change can affect agriculture in many ways and farmers need to be prepared for that. The article deals with the climate-smart agriculture, which is an under-researched topic in Hungary.

Overall, it is a good paper, however, could be improved with some modification. The main suggestions are:

Materials and Methods should be more detailed. Some information about it can be found in the Results section, so these could be moved easily.
Authors emphasise the role of the Digital Agricultural Academy (which is under development) many times, but there are other possibilities for farmers to get acquainted with digitalization (e.g. advisory system, postgraduate courses, field demonstrations, as well as good series of articles in Agro Naplo). Please mention a wider range of knowledge transfer possibilities in the discussion.
The Discussion part is not a real discussion, it is more likely a summary or conclusion. Authors should compare their results to those in the CSA adoption literature from other countries, and to other Hungarian surveys about agricultural digitalization. The connection – or the lack of it – with the National Climate Change Strategy could be also interesting.
The list of references is long (80 items), but some of them seems not to be really relevant. E.g. in lines 100-101 “Adaptation can play a significant role in sectoral and regional sustainability [24,25,26,27,28,29].” As the paper is about agriculture, such a list of other sectors (human health, tourism, road transport, energy policy) has no added value. However, the newest (2019) IPCC Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems, or some recent results of the LIAISON project might be of interest.
I don’t find to be very relevant the following self-citations:
- references 25, 27, 28 in line 101
- reference 55 in line 166

For further remarks please find ttached the pdf file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Review of the manuscript: Climate-Smart Agriculture: Sleeping Beauty of the Hungarian Agribusiness by Kinga Biró, Mária Szalmáné Csete, and Bálint Németh.

This manuscript is classified as a research article and it is based on some sort of questionnaire or survey. However, by the end of page 3, which includes the entire Introduction and Materials and Methods sections, it not clear to the reader what the specific objectives of this study are or what methods were actually used. Many of the sentences to this point have been vague while also being excessively wordy. The paper/writing simply lacks focus.

On line 146, I was shocked to find that the authors were going to share an interview with a single farmer! And this is a study about agriculture! What inferences or generalizations can be gained from a single interview? While this exercise may have given the authors “a deeper understanding of the questionnaire’s answers” the writing to this point leaves this reader with nothing except questions. It is exhausting to read because the authors do not get to the point.

Why are three and half pages of “Theoretical Background” needed after the two-paragraph Materials and Methods to share the findings from a simple questionnaire? A better Introduction and Materials and Methods would be profoundly preferable.

Figure 1 offers nothing in terms of improving understanding about what the authors were trying to achieve or what they found. It is simply boxes with terms connected by arrows. There is no actual useful information communicated here.

For the remaining figures and tables, N values are needed to show what the sample sizes were that were used to generate these percentages and ranking categories. What are the units for the axis in Figure 3 - numbers of respondents or percentage?

In short, the findings of this survey could be presented in a paper with half the length and half the number of references cited. The authors need to think clearly about what essential information the reader needs to understand about what was done and what the data indicate. Then it should be carefully and succinctly written.

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The author has modified the manuscript as per my suggestion.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments and the acceptance of the manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has been revised and restructured. In some parts, this has improved the quality of the paper, but unfortunately has raised new issues in other places.

Some key problems:

It is still mixed whether the results apply to Transdanubia or Hungary.
There are repeating sentences (probably due to copies ).
Some new text (eg. on pages 3 and 5) is irrelevant or does not fit to the actual place.
A quite long part about the identified CSA tools is in section 4.2 Quantitative analysis, despite 4.1 has the title Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) tools
(sorry for not highlighted this in the previous comments)
A great part of the former Theoretical background has been included in the Discussion, but this is not an evidence-based discussion.

For further remarks please find attached the pdf file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We would like to thank you for the useful comments and constructive suggestions of the manuscript titled “Climate-Smart Agriculture: sleeping beauty of the Hungarian agribusiness”. We have provide the point-by-point responses to your comments in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors responded to my first comment by indicating that the article was restructured but no specifics were provided. My re-reading indicates that most of the original text remains but has been relocated. There is now no longer a section 3 but there is a new section 6. The paper is now 16 pages instead of 17. And there are nine fewer references. But the issues with the writing and the lack of focus largely remain.

I’m pleased to see that the authors decided to eliminate the single farmer interview from this research manuscript.

Regarding the “Theoretical Background,” that material has mostly just been moved. No substantive changes or improvements to the content have been made.

The explanation for the continued inclusion of Figure 1 is weak. Simply stating in the response that it “helps to understand the research framework of CSA and try to deliver a brief overview in relation to the interrelations of most important terms” does not make it so.

Glad to see that the issues with the other figures were addressed.

My criticisms of the excessive length of a paper with relatively little to share in terms of data or findings stands. Eliminating a few of the references and a single page of text from the document does not change the overall manuscript quality very much.

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has improved.

However, it is surprising how much some data were changed (e.g. 18% or 58% of the respondents didn't heard about DAA; 34% or 58% need financial support for the development). But in the latter case - if we accept that based on the new data 58% need financial support - it is strange for me that only less than 30% of the respondents indicated the lack of financial resources as a barrier(Figure 2.). Which data supports the statement "a third of the respondents are interested in technical-technological innovations" (line 326)?

In the Discussion I still miss some evidence-based comparison to the results in the CSA adoption literature from other countries, and to other Hungarian surveys about agricultural digitalization.

In line 424 I suggest deleting "free" from the consultancy offered by input providers, because the price is included in the inputs or equipments.

Minor spell check is required (e.g. line 311 "58% could be developed the tools"; line 337 "farms different inputs, climate factors and soil characteristics" )

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

No additional comments.

Author Response

Thank you very much.