The Coffee Compromise: Is Agricultural Expansion into Tree Plantations a Sustainable Option?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This research try to respond a question: The Coffee Compromise: Is Agricultural Expansion into Tree Plantations a Sustainable Option? Interesting paper, well presented, impressive Results part. 

Please see below my minor comments/suggestions:

Good introduction and clearly presented aim of the study.

L100. Please provide the geographical coordinates of the location.

L163. Please check and revise L163. (Supplementary material Error! Reference source not found.) 

Figure 2. Please increase/adapt the size of Figure 2, similar with the size of the characters in the main text. To avoid a so "long figure", you can tabulate it on the entire width of the page, with no visible lines of the table: 3 graphs up, 2 graphs down. The figure will look much more professional and easier visible.

Sentence L435 need to be supported by reference - I suggest Bungau et al. Expatiating the impact of anthropogenic aspects and climatic factors on long term soil monitoring and management. Environ Sci. Pollut. Res. 2021, 202, 30528-30550. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14127-7 ; Gitea, M.A. et al. Orchard management under the effects of climate change: implications for apple, plum, and almond growing. Environ Sci Pollut Res. 2019, 26, 9908–9915. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-04214-1 ) 

At the final of Discussion section, please highlight in a separate paragraph the strengths and the weakness (if there is one) of your study.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing this paper. We greatly appreciate your time.

Point 1: L100. Please provide the geographical coordinates of the location. 

Response 1:  We are not sure what location across the catchments being modelled would be most useful to be supplied as coordinates. We will happily add in if reviewer 1 could suggest the most useful locale? 

Point 2: L163. Please check and revise L163. (Supplementary material Error! Reference source not found.)   

Response 2: Thank you for finding this, this has been fixed.  

Point 3: Figure 2. Please increase/adapt the size of Figure 2, similar with the size of the characters in the main text. To avoid a so "long figure", you can tabulate it on the entire width of the page, with no visible lines of the table: 3 graphs up, 2 graphs down. The figure will look much more professional and easier visible. 

Response 3: Thank you for the suggestion – we have undertaken this.  

Point 4: Sentence L435 need to be supported by reference - I suggest Bungau et al. Expatiating the impact of anthropogenic aspects and climatic factors on long term soil monitoring and management. Environ Sci. Pollut. Res. 2021, 202, 30528-30550. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14127-7 ; Gitea, M.A. et al. Orchard management under the effects of climate change: implications for apple, plum, and almond growing. Environ Sci Pollut Res. 2019, 26, 9908–9915. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-04214-1 )  

Response 4: We are slightly confused. We have L435 as : “ In this study, the effects over a full production cycle have not been captured” . We are happy to add in the reference suggestions (thank you for providing) if the reviewer could indicate the sentence that needs to be supported.  

Point 5: At the final of Discussion section, please highlight in a separate paragraph the strengths and the weakness (if there is one) of your study. 

Response 5: We have included commentary on the strengths and weaknesses of the study throughout the discussion. E.g:  

• “In reality, actual amounts of fertiliser application may be lower than modelled” 

• “However, the impacts of pine-coffee agroforestry on groundwater is more complex than can be captured in the study.  
• “In this study, the effects over a full production cycle have not been captured.” 

We feel a critique about the strengths and weakness of using InVEST is not the goal of this paper and have cited a study that investigates the strengths and weaknesses of using InVEST in section 2.3.   

Reviewer 2 Report

The Coffee Compromise: Is Agricultural Expansion into Tree Plantations a Sustainable Option?

This paper aimed to “address the question of whether pine-coffee agroforestry achieves a balance in ecosystem service out-puts, and can be considered as a sustainable development strategy”.

The article is interesting, well written and important to be published by an important journal such as Sustainability.

I will leave some contributions, which aim to improve the final version of the article:

• Standardize the term smallholder / small holder / smallholder farmers throughout the article;
• Line 99 and 122: say the name of 4 catchments;
• Figure 1: I couldn't see these land uses: bare land; other plantation species; understory crops/ young trees;
• Line 138: About Annual crop, which species (scientific names)?;
• Line 163: The expression "Error! Reference source not found" is correct/required?;
• Line 166: about conversion factor 0.46, say the reason. It is not enough to cite an author;
• Line 226: about the density of pine trees, how many individuals are there per hectare, on average?;
• You need to inform at the end of the methodology, how the data were analyzed. Univariate, multivariate, statistical tests?;
• Results: expressions like "are greater than" (line 259) or "have substantially lower" (line 262) or “have a greater nitrogen” (line 270), “Forest has the lowest sediment” (line 284) or “the smallest increase” (line 301) require statistical analysis;
• Discussion: line 337, about “… and mostly concern jungle rubber”, Are you referring to the world context or Indonesia?;
• Lines 340-341: about “… the land use is maintaining timber productivity”, Why didn't you address this throughout the results?;
• Lines 345-346: “… agroforestry within commercial plantations has the potential to contribute 345 towards carbon storage targets.”, please, use the scientific literature to support this possibility.
• Lines 391-392: about “… agroforestry dominated landscapes compared with agriculture.”, say the type of land use system, do not only “agriculture”;
• Conclusions: Use the last sentence of your conclusion to state whether or not it is a SUSTAINABLE OPTION (your title).

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing the paper, we greatly appreciate you time

Point 1: Standardize the term smallholder / small holder / smallholder farmers throughout the article; 

Response 1: Thank you for bringing this to our attention – we have standardized this  

Point 2: Line 99 and 122: say the name of 4 catchments; 

Response 2: The four catchments are part of the western section of the Upper Brantas Watershed, and were derived from a digital elevation model. They don’t have “official” names in that they haven’t been widely reported or known amongst researchers in the area. We haven’t been able to get their locally used names, and those we know of we aren’t sure if these names correspond to these explicit catchment boundaries. Additionally the associated streams/rivers in these catchments are ephemeral and not necessarily named.  We decided to use 1,2,3,4 to avoid confusion or misreporting.  

Point 3: Figure 1: I couldn't see these land uses: bare land; other plantation species; understory crops/ young trees; 

response 3: There are very few pixels of this land use.  

Point 4: Line 138: About Annual crop, which species (scientific names)?; 

Response 4: The scientific name has been added to the description of the scenarios in 2.2  

Point 5. Line 163: The expression "Error! Reference source not found" is correct/required?; 

Response 5: Thank you for bringing to our attention. This was an error and has been corrected.  

Point 6: Line 166: about conversion factor 0.46, say the reason. It is not enough to cite an author; 

Response 6: We have amended the sentence “[…]based on work by Hairiah and Rahayu [42]  to “[…] based on the manual produced by Hairiah and Rahayu [42] for measuring stored carbon in Indonesia”.  

Point 7. Line 226: about the density of pine trees, how many individuals are there per hectare, on average?; 

Response 7. This line is stating the assumptions that the density of pine trees is the same between agroforestry & pine as it’s a plantation forest.  We have density values for agroforestry but feel providing the value for one landcover type would look out of place here when the model doesn’t require information on density.  The raw data from UB plots of pine tree & coffee density is not within the remit of this paper – but it is in a paper hopefully being accepted for publication which describes the UB platform.  

Point 7: You need to inform at the end of the methodology, how the data were analyzed. Univariate, multivariate, statistical tests?; 

Response 7: We run the model for four catchments, which each have a different percentage cover of pine plantation in them, and add these totals together and compare between scenarios using these totals. Giving us a single value, and one cannot do statistics on a single value per scenario. We could have assumed 4 catchments = 4 values and undertaken a single factor ANOVA between the scenarios, however 4 values is a very small sample size, and values will vary as influenced by the amount of pine plantation forest rather than. Ultimately, we don’t feel we can run meaningful statistics on the output and feel it would be misleading to do so.  

Point 8: Results: expressions like "are greater than" (line 259) or "have substantially lower" (line 262) or “have a greater nitrogen” (line 270), “Forest has the lowest sediment” (line 284) or “the smallest increase” (line 301) require statistical analysis; 

Response 8: As explained in point 7 it is not possible to conduct meaningful statistics on the model outputs but given this we have adjusted the wording to highlight that these outcomes of the modelling work, and to remove the suggestion of testable difference.    

Point 9: Discussion: line 337, about “… and mostly concern jungle rubber”, Are you referring to the world context or Indonesia?; 

response 9. We refer to South East Asia, and will make this clear in the text.  

Point 10. Lines 340-341: about “… the land use is maintaining timber productivity”, Why didn't you address this throughout the results?; 

Response 10. The focus of this study was the farmers, and in this case – where they do not own the trees – the productivity of the timber is not of relevance to them. As they do not own the land, the land use is out of their control. If farmers owned the trees within their plots, and if pine production was a choice, productivity of the trees would be of value to them and we would have conduted an assessment of farmgate price – like with coffee & taro.  

Point 11: Lines 345-346: “… agroforestry within commercial plantations has the potential to contribute 345 towards carbon storage targets.”, please, use the scientific literature to support this possibility. 

Response 11 This is a finding of the study, where coffee understory directly contributes to above ground carbon stock. 

Point 12. Lines 391-392: about “… agroforestry dominated landscapes compared with agriculture.”, say the type of land use system, do not only “agriculture”; 

Response 12. We have switched this to “annual crop” to match the description in the methods  

Point 13 Conclusions: Use the last sentence of your conclusion to state whether or not it is a SUSTAINABLE OPTION (your title). 

Response 13. We have added this sentence “Ultimately, providing the risks to water quality are understood and mitigated, expansion of coffee within existing tree plantations is a sustainable option”  to the end of our conclusion.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear colleagues,

The present study addresses a topical issue, pine and coffee agroforestry in the eastern part of Java, Indonesia, in the context of sustainable development.

A first comment would be that in the summary I should identify some words: methodology, results and conclusions of the study, as briefly as possible. What was the methodology behind the study? What results will I identify in the text and what are the conclusions of this study. In its current form, the abstract has an evasive character, representing a series of ideas.

Then, some editing issues have been identified:

The quoted source does not appear on line 163 (Supplementary material Error! Reference source not found.).

Figure 3: Mmodel outputs of (a) carbon stored and (b) nitrogen exported for different land use change 281 options of the pine production band.

One last important comment I would have for the conclusions chapter. I noticed a number of papers cited in the conclusions of your study. The conclusions of the study should include only the ideas derived from the present research, but should not be brought into discussion and results from other studies. I suggest reorganizing the conclusions.

Sincerely,

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing the paper, we greatly appreciate your time.

Point 1. A first comment would be that in the summary I should identify some words: methodology, results and conclusions of the study, as briefly as possible. What was the methodology behind the study? What results will I identify in the text and what are the conclusions of this study. In its current form, the abstract has an evasive character, representing a series of ideas. 

Response 1. We appreciate that we have not written the words “methodology”, “results” ,“conclusions” however the abstract deliberately follows that structure. We appreciate that we have not provided figures for the results, but to do so would lose space to adequately describe the main results.  

Point 2. The quoted source does not appear on line 163 (Supplementary material Error! Reference source not found.). 

Response 2. Thank you for highlighting this we have fixed.

Point 3: Figure 3: Mmodel outputs of (a) carbon stored and (b) nitrogen exported for different land use change 281 options of the pine production band. 

Response 3. Thank you for highlighting this we have ammended

Point 4. One last important comment I would have for the conclusions chapter. I noticed a number of papers cited in the conclusions of your study. The conclusions of the study should include only the ideas derived from the present research, but should not be brought into discussion and results from other studies. I suggest reorganizing the conclusions. 

Response 4. We have moved the conclusion paragraph that contained citations to the discussion.  

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors improved the manuscript. This version is now publishable.