Study on the Evolution and Trends of Agricultural Carbon Emission Intensity and Agricultural Economic Development Levels—Evidence from Jiangxi Province
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Editor-in-Chief,
Thank you for inviting me to review this manuscript for your esteemed Journal. I hope that my contributions improve some points seen in this work.
While the manuscript "Evolution and Trends of Agricultural Carbon Emission Intensity and Agricultural Economic Development Level —Evidence from Jiangxi Province" fits the purpose and scope of Sustainability, and its conclusions and analysis from such a study help to improve understanding of the impacts of CO2 emission in China, several issues need to be adjusted.
Abstract:
The abstract is well written, but the GM's writing should be standardized (1,1). It has places in the text written as GM(1,1), using space between M and (
I suggest defaulting to GM(1,1).
Introduction:
General comment:
I believe there was a lack of hypothesis at work. Could the authors please add the hypothesis in the Introduction section.
Line 42: Add the C in: ... global pressure on carbon (C) emission reduction
Line 43: Please replace CO2 with carbon dioxide (CO2). Also, put the subscript number 2.
Line 48: I believe the sentence would be: of the total national carbon emissions [1]. Thus...
For I believe that this information quoted is from the work of Zhao W. J.; Li D.F.; Wang X.E. Ideas of low carbon agriculture development. Environ. protection 2010, 38, 38-39.
Line 54: In the sentence that says:
... by agricultural production activities.
Where are some examples, please put some examples at the end of the sentence.
Suggestion:
... by agricultural production activities (e.g., ?? rice cultivation, animal production, ??).
Line 59: Please adjust the writing of ... used CH4 and N2O from ...
The numbers 4 and 2 are subscripts.
Line 94: Please write like this: et al. [27]
There must be a dot after the "al".
Line 142: Please add “the” as suggested:
... Province and “the” realization ...
Materials and methods:
In lines 145-159 the described text must be removed. Please, we ask for more attention when designing the material.
Line 170: After 2021 Jiangxi Statistical Yearbook (Figure 1). You didn't mention the figure's call!
Figure 1 – Would it be possible to present a more striking flowchart? With the addition of images, colors, drawings and etc. The version is very simplified.
Line 181: Please, throughout the text standardize the writing of gases, e.g., CH4 the number 4 must be subscripted. Chemically the written form must always be underwritten.
Line 184: Citation [14] belongs to which part of the text? The statement of: carbon emissions calculation [14]. ? Or would it be: [14] Third, carbon?
Please make this clear.
Line 196: Where was this equivalence taken from? It would be nice to make a mention of some work with this information.
Also, the writing should be: method (1 t CH4 = 6.82 t C, 1 t N2O = 81.27 t C). Always with numerical descriptions underwritten.
At paper: https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/ac6380, you will find the necessary conversions of 1 t CH4 = 6.82 t C, 1 t N2O = 81.27 t C
Line 210: What would GDP be? This acronym was not described before, is GDP a gross domestic product? If so, please fill in full and add the acronym.
Line 213: Equation poorly formatted, please adjust.
Line 234: Could this be it? Calculate the total effect according to the first-order difference Eq. (4):
Line 236: The elements are poorly formatted.
Line 256: Adjust writing:
The gray prediction model [GM (1, 1)]
On another note, you should default to (1, 1) or (1,1).
Line 325: In Figure 2 the percentage values ​​must be adjusted. There is an overlap of values ​​that is difficult to visualize.
Line 329: Please join the paragraph from line 329 with the paragraph from line 332.
Line 366: In Figure 4, the carbon emission is raised to what power? Is 10 to the fourth power? Please adjust the font size.
Line 406: In Table 2 the values ​​after the point are spaced, please retain the space between the point and the value.
Line 409: Don't use -- (i.e., two dash). And yes —
Line 447: In the sentence: growth rate of 7.4%,. It shouldn't have a comma, just a period. For example, growth rate of 7.4%.
Line 464: Please join the quote with the text, for example: theory of "Lucid waters and
Line 498: In Figure 5 the text is badly formatted. Standardize the text, the y-axis writing should be as in the previous figures with ascending text.
Important note: An English revision is required, for example, in several parts of the text the authors use the word gray and grey. This should be standardized for American or British English, and should not mix the two languages.
Author Response
"Please see the attachment."
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Despite “all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript” as stated at the end of the paper, section 2 "Materials and Methods" is cut and pasted from the Instruction for authors and is not related to the content of the paper; the mathematics is confused with symbols often missing or misplaced; figures do not have a title and labels and legends are wrong or poorly formatted.
The review could stop here because it is clear that the authors did not take their role seriously, or they made fun of the journal and the reviewers.
Even ignoring this main aspect, there are several reasons for which the paper should not be accepted for publication.
The authors quote many similar papers about China, but it is unclear why the Jiangxi province deserves a separate supplementary analysis.
The carbon emissions equivalents are computed “according to the method (1tCH4=6.82tC, 1tN2O=81.27tC)” (line 196) that is not referenced nor justified and represents quite different values in comparison to the generally accepted GWP.
Fig. 1 does not show the “Construction of agricultural carbon emission index” as indicated in the caption since the output is the total emissions, and the emission factors are not computed from data but assumed from the literature.
The factors contributing to the emissions (Input materials, rice, farming, husbandry) are selected without any previous analysis but just on the basis of the literature. They may not be the best for the Jiangxi case, and indeed fig. 3 shows a marked increase in rice emissions in correspondence with a decrease in the total ones.
It is unclear why trying to determine the relationship between the overall emissions and the agricultural sectors when the forecasting model is a simply autoregressive one.
The predictive performances of the GM(1,1) model in fig. 5 appear to be relatively poor despite the statistical indexes quoted in the text. In particular, the model shows a much slower decrease with respect to that actually measured in the last years, and it shows an unexpected trend variation from 2025 on, given that no external factor influences the model evolution.
The conclusions are not strictly linked to the previous analysis (line 519 talks of the labor force size that is never mentioned in the manuscript), and the policy indications are just common-sense statements that could have been written even before the study. Some of the “policy insights” are just tautologies, such as that mentioned in line 560: to reduce agricultural emissions, it recommends “to promote… green and low-carbon development of agriculture.”
Finally, the way the text is written should be completely revised. The words “agricultural carbon emissions” appear 90 (ninety) times in the manuscript. The grey model is referred to as “gray” eight times. There are sentences six lines long (e.g., lines 162 to 167). There are many sentences without a verb as if they were items of a list that is not explicitly formulated. 10^4 RMB always appears as 104 RMB. Strange typos appear (e.g., line 231 or line 244) that may be due to a cut-and-paste “unsupervised” operation.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This manuscript is about the agricultural carbon emissions. Comments are as follows:
The contributions of this paper is vague. In the introduction, the authors said "However, we found that there are fewer research findings related to agricultural carbon emissions in Jiangxi......However, they focus on agricultural material inputs to study carbon emissions and influencing factors of the farming industry, and fail to explore the possibilities of future carbon emission development in depth"
Do you mean your main contribution is just based on Jiangxi province because no other literature explores the possibilities of future carbon emission development in depth in this province as you said? If so, in my opinion, this is not a contribution seriously. As far as I know, there are a few similar research having used the methodology framework shown in this manuscript to decompose and predict carbon emissions.
In summary. Do authors fill the research gap from methodology perspectives or find an interesting research question? This must be elaborated.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Editor-in-Chief,
Thank you for letting me re-evaluate this manuscript for your respected Journal.
Corrections were made to the text (and I still see problems in the wording). Here are some suggestions:
Line 43: made carbon (C) peaking.
The letter C must be separated. Please be careful in writing.
Line 149: What would "ACEs.[e2]" be?
Line 172: Again, what would [e2] be?
This repeats on lines 198, 227, 362, 343, 544, and 574!
I am starting to think these are highlights from previous comments, on the other hand, this should not appear in the text at all.
This type of symbology can be confused with the writing of the text, and make your writing wrong and badly formatted. Always be careful and attentive in writing.
- Table 2 still has values written wrong! Please pay attention to the writing!
- Table 3 still has values written wrong! Please pay attention to the writing!
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
the manuscript can be accepted
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Editor-in-Chief,
Thanks to you and the authors for providing a new revised version of the paper.
Now I am satisfied with the changes made.
All the best.
