Carbon Footprint Assessment Based on Agricultural Traceability System Records: A Case Study of Onion Production in Southern Taiwan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

making agriculture more sustainable is an urgent task, but it is highly-complex, and, thus, it is very reasonable to focus on particular aspects of agricultural activities in particular countries. This is why the topic of your manuscript should be appreciated, and it matches perfectly the journal’s scope. Your pose good research questions about measurements of carbon footprint from onion production, and they are answered with a good case study. The manuscript is rather informative, and it offers an interesting methodology, which is well-explained. Nonetheless, the structure of the work needs improvements, and its content needs additions. The work is also not referenced adequately. I hope my comments will help bringing it in order.

1)      Where are your direct results?

2)      Key words: I recommend to add more words, but to exclude those already present in the title.

3)      Introduction, Lines 51-63: in my opinion, it is a must to indicate the basic works on carbon footprint estimations, also in agriculture. Alternatively, this paragraph looks like a collection of personal thoughts.

4)      Introduction: you have to answer two simple questions: why Taiwan and why onion? Please, give brief characteristics of its agriculture and its socio-economic importance, general environmental problems and country’s involvement in carbon footprint mitigation, and “role” of onion among other vegetables in this country.

5)      Section 2: what is the language of the raw data? Have you undertaken some translations?

6)      Although this contribution is methodological, it is designed as a regular research article. If so, subsection 3.1 should be moved to the previous section and labeled as 2.1.

7)      Results and Discussion should be TWO different sections, as usually done in all good papers. A half of what is written in your section 3 (3.1 and 3.2) is fully relevant to Results. 3.3 and 3.4 should be moved to Discussion, but this is not enough. Discussion should put your study into the international research context: what do your findings mean (not only methodologically) in comparison to what can be learnt from the other papers? I also think that your results can be brought in correspondence to the broad knowledge of sustainability, including UN SDGs.

8)      Conclusions: please, shorten slightly this section and indicate the principal findings and their interpretations. Do not forget to mention limitations of your study and perspectives for further research.

9)      Several photographs can be added to this paper.

10)  The list of References seems to be TOO short for such an ambitious paper submitted to a high-class journal.

11)  The writing needs certain polishing. I also recommend to check whether the excessive use of words given in “” is really necessary.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The writing needs certain polishing. I also recommend to check whether the excessive use of words given in “” is really necessary.

Author Response

“請查看附件。”

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Highlight changes in yellow in a next revision, please. No track changes.

 

There is similarity to be considered...

What are the chances of having similarity in similar statements?

“It is hoped that the results of this study”

 

Please clarify.

“Using onion farms in southern Taiwan (R.O.C.) a”

 

I would like to see clear quantitative data being expressed in the extract is more clear findings because I am still in the abstract and I expect that this kind of manuscript has quantitative  data.

 

Add more...

“Keywords: Traceability; Carbon Footprint; Allium cepa”

 

Please try not to start headings, as captions, with “the”

 

I am sorry how is this figure two if there is no figure one, I just do not get it or so. Please make sure to add colour and improve the caption.

“Figure 2. Process of modified LCA carbon footprint calculation”

The same in all other cases.

There are so many ways of making the figures so much more appealing

 

Please do not use the term diagram in the figure’s captions. This is in fact, a table.

“Figure 4. Diagram of agricultural traceability system raw data”

as others

 

No formula, but equation and in any case, please change the heading because the heading should not be called like this...

“2.3 Formula for calculating the agricultural carbon footprint F”

 

Please respect the italics parameters for variables. Please make sure to assure that the absence of any reference immediately before the equations are presented means complete originality. Please make sure to define all terms used in equations after not before.

 

Please make sure to include below tables and their notes every abbreviation or parameter being used.

“Table 2. Table of formula parameters and corresponding codes.”

Again, you cannot call a table a table. So every caption needs to be improved.

 

Please try not to use we.

 

Unless the case study approach is addressed in the abstract disc. are not results, but in fact methods?

“3.1 Case description.”

 

So how would this be results?

“Figure 6. Diagram of onion Cultivation Lifecycle”

 

It seems to me that the manuscript needs to be entirely restructured because there is a mix between what is methods and what are results. Results are what resulted from the methodology used in this article.

 

Then if authors call it results and discussion, there needs to be a meaningful discussion relying on a complete set of relevant recent and international references. Many tables need to be further worked to be improved as well as the global content of the paper.

 

It is not clear to me once again what are results and what are values that the authors are presenting collected from literature sources.

 

Once again, you need to be more clear in terms of real findings, because you cannot just mostly duplicate the 5% value already mentioned in the abstract.

 

Please do not summarise findings mentioning it like this in the conclusions section.

“In summary,”

 

I hope the authors are able to understand the scope of the above comments. There is. wide room for improvement in this paper and it can be much more attractive and less confusing if authors are willing to further work on it streamlined the entire paper restructured improving figures and tables and removing non essential information. See that in fact the methods are wider in terms of content than the results section.

 

There is no real discussion section.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

moderate

Author Response

"Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, thank you very much for your responses and multiple revisions! The manuscript looks perfect.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Some additional, minor polishing may be required, but slight polishing provided commonly by MDPI together with proof preparation will be enough.

Author Response

Thank you for your guidance. I've done some fine-tuning to help improve the quality of English Language. If there are any shortcomings, please do not hesitate to instruct me.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Highlight changes in yellow in a next revision, please. No track changes.

 

Dear author,  

It is not possible to properly review a manuscript with old content, because then. similarity will also be considering the old content so as expressed above, I need to have a clean version with changes highlighted in yellow.

In any case, please see that responses to the reviewers are full of content in a non English language and full of comments.

This is a time consuming task.

 

Reviewing is a voluntary task to help the community.

Please try to review your own files and see if you could do it.

 

See that responses are not to copy paste what was changed, but to explain in response to the reviewer’s comments.

I could not understand the answers made because it’s a mess. I am sorry.

 

About the discussion it needs to rely on references, otherwise it is just “talk”, as I usually say.

 

Please try not to use this kind of language. The study did this. The study did that.

“This study verified the feasibility”

 

Poor quality:

“Figure 6. 1. Onion Cultivation Lifecycle”

It seems to me that my comments relating the quality of figures, which in some cases are not really figures or are not really tables, were mostly ignored.

 

 

So,

Previously:

 

There is similarity to be considered...

What are the chances of having similarity in similar statements?

“It is hoped that the results of this study”

 

Please clarify.

“Using onion farms in southern Taiwan (R.O.C.) a”

 

I would like to see clear quantitative data being expressed in the extract is more clear findings because I am still in the abstract and I expect that this kind of manuscript has quantitative  data.

 

Add more...

“Keywords: Traceability; Carbon Footprint; Allium cepa”

 

Please try not to start headings, as captions, with “the”

 

I am sorry how is this figure two if there is no figure one, I just do not get it or so. Please make sure to add colour and improve the caption.

“Figure 2. Process of modified LCA carbon footprint calculation”

The same in all other cases.

There are so many ways of making the figures so much more appealing

 

Please do not use the term diagram in the figure’s captions. This is in fact, a table.

“Figure 4. Diagram of agricultural traceability system raw data”

as others

 

No formula, but equation and in any case, please change the heading because the heading should not be called like this...

“2.3 Formula for calculating the agricultural carbon footprint F”

 

Please respect the italics parameters for variables. Please make sure to assure that the absence of any reference immediately before the equations are presented means complete originality. Please make sure to define all terms used in equations after not before.

 

Please make sure to include below tables and their notes every abbreviation or parameter being used.

“Table 2. Table of formula parameters and corresponding codes.”

Again, you cannot call a table a table. So every caption needs to be improved.

 

Please try not to use we.

 

Unless the case study approach is addressed in the abstract disc. are not results, but in fact methods?

“3.1 Case description.”

 

So how would this be results?

“Figure 6. Diagram of onion Cultivation Lifecycle”

 

It seems to me that the manuscript needs to be entirely restructured because there is a mix between what is methods and what are results. Results are what resulted from the methodology used in this article.

 

Then if authors call it results and discussion, there needs to be a meaningful discussion relying on a complete set of relevant recent and international references. Many tables need to be further worked to be improved as well as the global content of the paper.

 

It is not clear to me once again what are results and what are values that the authors are presenting collected from literature sources.

 

Once again, you need to be more clear in terms of real findings, because you cannot just mostly duplicate the 5% value already mentioned in the abstract.

 

Please do not summarise findings mentioning it like this in the conclusions section.

“In summary,”

 

I hope the authors are able to understand the scope of the above comments. There is. wide room for improvement in this paper and it can be much more attractive and less confusing if authors are willing to further work on it streamlined the entire paper restructured improving figures and tables and removing non essential information. See that in fact the methods are wider in terms of content than the results section.

 

There is no real discussion section.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

moderate

Author Response

Please see the attachment. I've done some fine-tuning to help improve the quality of English Language. If there are any shortcomings, please do not hesitate to instruct me.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Improved, but in my perspective  the manuscript need improved quality and colour in figures

Comments on the Quality of English Language

moderate

Author Response

Q: need improved quality and colour in figures....

A: Thank you for your guidance. About the revision in this time, pictures are optimized appropriately, including adding color and resizing to ensure proper viewing.