Assessment of Sustainability in Agriculture of the European Union Countries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I think the paper will be of interest to Agronomy readers. It is interesting, covers an interesting topic and a wide geographical area. Nevertheless, I think the papers needs some modification before its publication.

Abstract

A brief explanation of what TOPSIS-based measures consist of would be necessary. Unless, to explain what TOPSIS means.

The authors present results on the countries with higher o lower levels of sustainability. They say that there are 8 EU countries with lower levels of sustainability, including Romania and Slovenia. Why do they highlight those countries and not others. I’d highlight the top 2 in the lowest level indicating the specific result in each country.

I think ‘European Union countries’ is not a proper keyword. I’d suggest to use ‘European Union’

Introduction

In the same sentence is said that ‘agriculture is keeper of the natural environment’ and disturbs the functioning of nature’. Be more precise.

In the literature review on agriculture sustainability I miss some the most impacting research papers published in the past few years, especially the research by Jules Pretty or Jonathan Foley.

After stating the paper I miss in the introduction how the authors are going to solve the problem, i.e. how they are going to work with a set of sound and useful socio-environmental indicators to overcome the problems of existing literature. I realize they will explain more in the ‘materials and methods’ section but I’d recommend to briefly anticipate them in the introduction.

Methods

Unfortunately, I’m not able to understand the mathematical model so I can’t guarantee its validity. My major concern in this part is that I do not totally understand wether the model used is original and developed by the authors or well developed by Eurostat. I'd clarify this. In the latter case I wonder to what extent the results are novels? Are they directly taken from Eurostat databases? This would reduce the significance of the research.

Results

Results are interesting but how they are presented seems to me a bit obscure. I’d recommend to add a Supplementary Material indicating the results per country and indicator in order the reader can evaluate the position of each country and indicator.

I’d highly recommend to include more graphic material in the paper, especially country maps showing the results, e.g. the synthesis of socio-economic, environmental and total results. I’d recommend to include maps for majors indicator in the supplementary materials

Conclusions

The paper, in its current version is absolutely descriptive. I’d suggest to include a section of discussion or well to expand conclusions. I miss references of main authors in the topic of sustainable agriculture such us Foley, Pretty, etc. that have published ground-breaking research in key journals such us Nature or Science. This paper deals with a very aggregated scales and should be discussed or analysed with other global literature.

In the same direction, I miss deeper analysis of the results. Authors only present the results but they barely comment the reasons and the implications of them. I think something should be said in the discussion or the conclusions.

Author Response

Please see the attachement

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors build their article on the concept of sustainable growth, which is widespread but already widely criticized by different sectors, as something that would be desirable but impossible to achieve. We cannot always want growth because growth cannot always be sustainable.

There is a criticism of the lack of consideration of social aspects, which is correct, but the article adds nothing in this respect, does not consider new options for indicators, only makes use of existing ones.

Some minor questions arise throughout the text:
Line 41 - Unclear phrase.
Table 1 - the acronyms should be explained below the table in small letters.
Line 101 - What is a statistical and substantive analysis? I think here it would be worth describing a little more, for those who are not within the theme.
It is not clear why these indicators / features are best suited for the assessment of different sustainability components.
Line 108 - What are stimulants and discouraging? of sustainability? If so, then this is not so linear.
Line 146 - unclear. Isn't it "influence agricultural sustainability"?

The conclusions are vague and criticism could be made of the need for the CAP to reformulate and make its measures more ambitious. I think the article itself demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the CAP in getting countries to build a sustainable agricultural policy.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.doc