Modelling Fertilizer Use in Relation to Farmers’ Household Characteristics in Three Gorges Reservoir Area, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
No comments
Author Response
Thanks~
Reviewer 2 Report
The issue is relevant and timely. The paper is straightforward, well-written and well structured. Methods are appropriate and are adequately described. The figures are useful, readable and well presented. However, the discussion is a bit confusing. Both the content and style are weaker than in the rest of the article. The ideas put forward are not clear and they seem to go back and forth. It seems there is even some kind of contradiction when relating the idea of more intensive agriculture and reduced use of fertilizers. I am not saying the idea is incorrect – which is not but this depends how the auhtors focus it. I think perhaps it should be worded in a more careful way. The dichotomy between small- and large-scale farming and the part on policy should also be explained more carefully. Is annual income really the second most-important factor contributing to the variance of fertilizer use? I am not sure I can see this in the results. To wrap up, I would suggest structuring the section as a whole better and in a more orderly fashion. I would also suggest discussing the results in the same order as they were presented in the previous section. In addition, I also miss some discussion on the limitations of the study, such as, for example, the limited sample size the authors mention in line 488.
Minor comments
- Tables are not correctly numbered.
- Lines 23-25: I would suggest acknowledging that future land consolidation is one of several or one amongst other ways to achieve more sustainable fertilization strategies.
- Line 45: It is a three-step methodology, isn´t it? (according to Figure 1).
- Lines 221-234: There seems to be a bit of contradiction between “was targeted at the planting activities of the previous season” and “the planned fertilizer use for the future year”. I would suggest correcting this if necessary.
- Lines 421-431: How about rice?
- Lines 463-473: I would suggest improving somewhat the explanation. It is not clear from the text. R2 does not seem to be close to 1 in all phases (i.e., training, validating and testing) within the range of neurons 4-6 according to Table 4.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This is an interesting analysis and seeks to answer important questions with application well beyond the study area. Also, given the wide popularity of the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach and its potential usefulness, the manuscript has the potential to benefit the Agriculture community but requires minor revisions to the text.
- L54: The authors need to provide more details for why small parcels causing more environmental issues than mechanized planting. Please, provide a reference and explain how.
- L79: insert “a” before “relationship”.
- L80: “As such” looks unnecessary in this sentence.
- L80: what are the differences between these models and your approach? Or what are the findings from those studies?
- L137-L139: This sentence might be unnecessary because it is the same as the objective of your study already mentioned in the introduction section.
- L213: insert “people” after 4.9.
- L213-214: provide some reference for this sentence.
- L236: delete “and” after “;”.
- L249: insert a comma after “three layers”.
- L278: provide more details for Levenberg–Marquardt backpropagation algorithm or reference.
- L374-378: Provide appropriate references to support these findings.
- L385: replace “of” with “for”.
- L414-415: Please, provide the date the authors performed the survey and its type, such as a cross-sectional analysis (one point in time) or longitudinal survey (observations over some extended period of time) in the methodology section. To support the “indicating that the mean fertilizer use of the sample was higher than the national average.”, the authors need to provide the latest amount of fertilizer usage in China, closer to the date of your survey. Also, adding crop types or their similarities between the nationwide and the study area will support this sentence more.
- L416: delete “to” after “Regarding”.
- L471: insert “the” before “increased”.
- L490: replace “majority of fertilizer use” with “a general fertilizer application rate”.
- L552: replace “these” with “this”.
- L549: It’s ambiguous. About what average levels?
- L553: delete “In this survey”. You have “in this study” in the sentence.
- L565: insert a comma after “i.e.”.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
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
All abbreviations should be explained in the text when they are used for the first time. For example, Equation (1).
The conclusions are a sufficiently informative, but it lacks of some concrete research results data (numeric values).
[*] What is the main question addressed by the research?
The work deals with quite interesting issues regarding the modelling of decision-making of 14 fertilizer use based on the data collected from 200 farmer households in China, using a well-fitted artificial neural network (ANN) with incorporated variance-based 16 sensitivity analysis.
[*] Is it relevant and interesting? This topic is relevant and interesting, but I am not sure that is quite understandable for all comunity of Agriculture.
[*] How original is the topic? The topic is original that well-fitted artificial neural network (ANN) was used for survey analysis.
[*] What does it add to the subject area compared with other published material? The new contribution of this article that sensitivity analysis with the assistance of the proposed optimal ANN model is used to show the effect of the farmers’ fertilization behavior. This can be used for future analysis to reduce chemical fertilization.
[*] Is the paper well written? The paper is well written.
[*] Is the text clear and easy to read? The text is easy to read.
[*] Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented? The conclusions are a sufficiently informative, but it lacks of some concrete research results data (numeric values).
[*] Do they address the main question posed? Of course, they examined the main question.
Author Response
Point 1: All abbreviations should be explained in the text when they are used for the first time. For example, Equation (1).
Response 1: Thanks for the advice. We have modified the MS accordingly, please see the highlighted lines 262-267, 335-346.
Point 2: The conclusions are a sufficiently informative, but it lacks of some concrete research results data (numeric values)
Response 2: Thanks for the comment. Please check the highlighted lines 604-610 where the values of R2 for error analysis for ANN models and S an ST values for sensitivity analysis are added.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper details Modelling Fertilizer Use in Relation to Farmers' Household Characteristics in Three Gorges Reservoir Area, China.
It is an interesting and complete study.
This paper can be published in Agriculture, without other modifications.
Author Response
Point 1: This paper details Modelling Fertilizer Use in Relation to Farmers' Household Characteristics in Three Gorges Reservoir Area, China. It is an interesting and complete study. This paper can be published in Agriculture, without other modifications..
Response 1: Thanks very much, and your approval is very important to us.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
line 27 100 - In introduction the authors describe chemical fertilizers. It would be good to compare commonly used fertilization techniques. In particular, the authors write about nitrogen (line 48). I recommend that the authors should read the article that I note below because it is about described topic.
Roman, K. K., & Konieczna, A. (2015). Evaluation of a different fertilisation in technology of corn for silage, sugar beet and meadow grasses production and their impact on the environment in Poland. African Journal of Agricultural Research, 10(12), 1351-1358.
It would be also good to describe the economic impact of the technology used and compare how much the commonly used technology (an example estimate by the used fertilizers) would cost to that proposed by the authors technology. This is important because the cost of implementing the technology is the basis for its application. Especially in line 65, cost is mentioned as a factor of production.
Discussion and especially conclusion is very short.
Author Response
Point 1: line 27 100 - In introduction the authors describe chemical fertilizers. It would be good to compare commonly used fertilization techniques. In particular, the authors write about nitrogen (line 48). I recommend that the authors should read the article that I note below because it is about described topic.
Roman, K. K., & Konieczna, A. (2015). Evaluation of a different fertilisation in technology of corn for silage, sugar beet and meadow grasses production and their impact on the environment in Poland. African Journal of Agricultural Research, 10(12), 1351-1358..
Response 1: Thanks for your advice. We have also read the recommended article which presents a case study in Poland based on comparing different techniques of fertilization by calculating the difference (balance) between the NPK demands of three crops and actual NPK received from application by so called different “techniques”. The conclusion is that the fertilizer use rate of the respondent farms in Poland have exceeded the recommended levels and the natural fertilization excess “may be” caused by animal waste. This article is interesting, however, it is not relevant to our study nor contributes to the presentation of the introduction section. The reasons we didn’t include this article or the fertilizer techniques are: 1) the article you mentioned is based on a Polish case which has total different situation and agriculture background in our study domains, i.e., the typical rural regions in the Three Gorges Reservoir in China such as contrasting climate and topography, agriculture practice and mode, the development of regional agriculture and society which we have already discussed in the introduction and discussion sections; 2) The purpose of our study is to quantify the links between fertilizer use and the farm household. The performance of the model is shown to be very good on capturing such links comparing with the traditional correlation analysis. The most affected factors have been identified by our methods, which increases the understanding on decision-making in the context of fertilizer use and supports the local government for formulating related policies on environmental protect and agriculture guidance and education.
Point 2: It would be also good to describe the economic impact of the technology used and compare how much the commonly used technology (an example estimate by the used fertilizers) would cost to that proposed by the authors technology. This is important because the cost of implementing the technology is the basis for its application. Especially in line 65, cost is mentioned as a factor of production.
Response 2: Thanks for the comment. We are unsure about the term “technology” because in this paper we did not intend to investigate the relation between the fertilizer use and the related cost incurred to the farmers’ households. The fertilizer use is the total usage planned by each farmer household and the technology of fertilization (e.g., how to fertilize, the fertilize depth, the absorption/transformation of nitrogen by different crops/in different farmland) is not the main purpose for this paper to explore. As the main income of the respondent farmer households is from the agriculture production, we included “the annual income” as factor in our survey and found that “the annual income” is the second level of factor contributing to the variance of fertilizer use, especially its interaction with the education level and awareness to environmental protection of household. In line 65, the cost is mentioned as “the opportunity cost” which is widely used in economics and has implicit effect on farmers behaviour or decision-makings in context of fertilization.
However, we agree that it is also a good point to include the opportunity cost (e.g., cost of labour and time) as the factor in further study (please see the highlighted lines 614-619)
Point 3: Discussion and especially conclusion is very short..
Response 3: Thanks for your comment. We added the discussion for the potential application of our proposed methodology and the further recommendations of studies are also added in the highlighted lines 586-593. And the numeric values of R2 for error analysis for ANN models, and S an ST values for sensitivity analysis are added in the highlighted lines 604-610.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript was not properly corrected. The manuscript transmission does not contain any significant information, although in line 245 - 353 the authors list several formulas for comparing the factors ? (?). These factors have not been analyzed, assuming the relationship referred to by the authors of ? (?). In this case, I would recommend using basic multivariate statistical analyzes to investigate this correlation.
There is lack of wright literature review.
The economic impact of used fertilizers was not described.
The main aspects was not improved.
The authors did not follow the previously submitted review, which made the entire manuscript worse. In such a state, I advise against publishing the manuscript in this journal.
