Analysis of Current and Qualified Major Grain Producing Areas in China in the Last 30 Years
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The revised manuscript has a great improvement. I have another problem: What are the data sources of national commodity grain bases in Figure 10?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your comments. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to your comments are as following:
Point 1: The revised manuscript has a great improvement. I have another problem: What are the data sources of national commodity grain bases in Figure 10?
Response 1: Thanks for your comment. We have added the illustration about the data sources of national commodity grain bases in Figure 10. The spatial location of national commodity grain base was vectorized by the author using the descriptive definition and the picture of national commodity grain base.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments have been sent to the editorial office.
The authors have addressed my detailed comments, however, the major concerns have not been tackled. The major remarks about novelty and contribution, the sufficiency of the results, and adequacy of the literature review along with the problem statement have still remained.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your comments. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to your comments are as following:
Point 1: The authors have addressed my detailed comments, however, the major concerns have not been tackled. The major remarks about novelty and contribution, the sufficiency of the results, and adequacy of the literature review along with the problem statement have still remained.
Response 1: Thanks for your comment. We have rewritten and clarified the research contents in Section 1 based on the literature review. First, in the current studies, the analysis of the spatial pattern of the grain production evolution mainly focused on its transformation direction and production advantages based on the center of gravity of the grain output and the production concentration index based on the administrative regionalization, while less attention was paid to analyzing the spatial agglomerations and the differences in the regional grain production at a fine scale. Second, we are also thinking about where to become new grain supply areas and what changes have taken place in the existing grain supply areas based on the spatial pattern of grain production evolution. Therefore, the spatial pattern of grain production evolution is meaningful when it is considered in connection with the commodity grain bases. The development of China’s commodity grain bases could safeguard national grain reserves and balance the regional grain supply and demand. And commodity grain bases are defined as relatively fixed farming areas where there is fertile soil and good climatic conditions on a large scale, with high output of grains both by total and per capita. Thus, we aim to obtain knowledge and reach conclusions helpful in supplementing the current scheme of the National Commodity Grain Bases by analyzing basic farming conditions and the spatial pattern of grain production evolution by total and per capita output.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Accept in present form!
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your comments.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments weres sent to the editorial office.
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.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
China's agricultural production is not only related to the food security of China's population. It may even threaten the world's food system balance. The article takes China's main food production areas as the research object, discusses the regional changes from 1990 to 2019, and uses spatial analysis techniques to develop a qualified candidate list of commercial grain bases. Overall, the article is rich in content and detailed data, but the writing method is more like a course essay or project report than an academic essay. Besides, the article has almost no international perspective, which is not in line with the publication scope of an international journal.
Specific comments:
ABSTRACT is written in a strange way, focusing on describing the background and methods, and the description of the research conclusions is unclear.
INTRODUCTION lacks an international background. The article is aimed at international readers rather than a certain region, and the literature review needs to be further strengthened.
The food definition is not clear. Is it grains or foods, including cash crops, etc.?
Research method 2.2.1-- I don't think Graph-image thinking is a method.
The logical relationship between research methods is not explained. Why study kernel density and spatial correlation？
Why is Fig. 1 not directly presented with topographic maps, provincial administrative divisions, or agricultural divisions? It is recommended to use zoning boundaries to express more clearly.
Fig. 2 is a good performance, but it is too vague. It is recommended to increase the font size and increase the image resolution.
Similarly, the resolution of Fig. 3 is too low to see clearly.
In Result Analysis, What is the correlation logic between 3.1 and 3.2? After analyzing the agro-ecological conditions of the 15 districts, the actual quantitative research is still under China's nine major agricultural zoning systems. So what is the significance of the aforementioned analysis? Is it just for popular science?
Although the chart content is very detailed, section 3.2.2 still needs some language to describe the results briefly. Integrating the tables, putting them in supplementary materials, and keeping the spatial distribution pattern map in the main text is recommended.
Section 3.4 seems to synthesize the previous analysis content, but it is not successful presently. Research results cannot be judged by experience alone as a scientific paper. It is suggested that the author apply the method like clustering or classification model combined with the previous analysis results to give a credible conclusion.
L424, DISCUSSION section continues to throw questions to readers, which is not a good practice. Generally, discussions should focus on the uncertainty of research methods and the application value of research results.
CONCLUSION only states the research content and does not give out the conclusions obtained.
The references are all regional journals, lacking an international perspective.
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript aims at analyzing pattern of farming conditions spatially and temporally in China, and identifying areas for commercial grain production.
General comments:
- Novelty of this manuscript is not clear, and the results do not add new findings to the body of the existing knowledge. In addition, the research framework including methods and applied indicators is obscure and untraceable.
- Discussion and conclusion are not sufficient and do not support the research questions.
- Literature reviewed for problem justification and model adoption is very short and is not satisfactory. A lot of the related studies are not cited and excluded in section 1 and section 2.
Detailed comments:
- I think the method called graph-image thinking given in section 2.2.1 is not a certain analysis technique, and it is extensively used in the scientific studies without giving a special name to the analytical figures. This way, I think there is no need for section 2.2.1, and I recommend the authors to remove section 2.2.1 if they cannot support it with the appropriate references.
- It is indicated that Kernel Density model and Moran index respectively described in section 2.2.2 and section 2.2.3 are applied in the analysis process. But, no explanation has been given to connect them to the problem stated in section 1. I recommend the authors to describe what they expect from the models, how the introduced models can assist them to answer their research questions, and why they select these models for implementation in section 2.
- Research steps are vague, and the explanations come under each title present dispersed and scattered ideas. This explanation type and incoherence of the content totally confuses a reader, and s/he cannot keep track of the research sequence. I recommend the authors to provide a figure in which the research stages are apparently illustrated, and every part of it is fully described in section 2.
- Heat, soil, and water are introduced as the main factors for farming condition in line 163 of page 4. But, no explanation had been given for clarifying the importance of these factors.
- Quality of the figures particularly figure 2 and 3 is not acceptable. Also, figure 2 is more like a table than a figure.
- The purpose of figure 2 and using 3 axes for showing the heat, soil, and water conditions is not clear. As the numbers on the axes have different scales, the values reported for region cannot be compared smoothly.
- Table 1-7 and Figure 7-15 have been left without any explanation throughout the text.
- English language and content arrangement heavily need revision.
Reviewer 3 Report
In the recent 30 years, China's grain production efficiency and spatial agglomeration characteristics have changed greatly. When the balance of grain supply and demand is considered, a contradiction between farming suitability and actual deviation gives us a warning of the crisis on China’s food security. In this paper, method of graph thinking on spatial-temporal pattern analysis, and statistical operators such as Kernel Density, Local Moran’s I was implemented, with results of ‘pattern map and tables’ series describing the basic farming condition pattern in China, and spatial-temporal pattern of China’s regional grain output and surplus-shortage. Then a qualified candidate list of commercial grain bases at both country and regional level was raised out, with a purpose to discuss at an academic viewpoint the relationship between prerequisite conditions and sufficient ones for commercial grain bases.
Overall, although the workload of this paper is relatively large, there are some problems that need to be improved by the author. My detailed comments are as follows:
- The form is not standardized. For example, in table 2, where ' Far Northwest China ( Xinjiang ) ' is not displayed in the middle, and the pictures and text in the form are overlaid.
- The pictures in this paper have serious problems. First, Figure 3 is not clear and beautiful, and some red characters are not fully displayed; secondly, the diagram borders of ' provincial-level administrative region ' in some kernel density graphs are not fully displayed, and since time comparisons are needed, the kernel density graphs should be unified into numerical values rather than fuzzy representations with high and low values; finally, it is also the most important problem that there is a boundary problem in the nuclear density map and Figure 16, and no nine-segment line is marked.
- This paper mainly analyzes the spatial pattern of grain production and the status of grain supply and demand in China's major grain-producing areas. The larger part is the nuclear density analysis of each major grain-producing area. The method is too simple and single, and the content is not rich enough. It is suggested that the author enrich the content, for example, can we consider the supply and demand flow of grain production in major grain-producing areas?
