AI-Driven Future Farming: Achieving Climate-Smart and Sustainable Agriculture

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of the article by Karishma Kumari, Ali Mirzakhani Nafchi, Salman Mirzae and Ahmed Abdalla "AI-Driven Future Farming for Achieving Climate-Smart and Sustainable Agriculture" submitted for publication in the journal "AgriEngineering".

The article requires the following improvements:

1. In the introduction on page 1, in the sentence "The rapid growth of the global population, projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050..." there is no reference confirming this statement.

2. At the end of the "Introduction" section, a brief description of all sections of the article should be added.

3. It is necessary to add a formal description of AI in the language of mathematical formulas. 4. It is necessary to justify the criteria by which it is determined which solution is the best. 5. In Fig. 3, AI models are shown, but in the future, when developing a solution, there is no comparison of them, there are no modeling results and learning parameters. 6. It is necessary to add a section related to the selection of parameters for the AI model, for example, using PCA. 7. It is necessary to add a formal description of the problem being solved. 8. It is necessary to add a section on combating retraining. 9. Add a table that describes the format and parameters of the data. 10. You need to add a table with abbreviations. 11. In Fig. 8, the OX axis is not signed.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your time reviewing our article. Below are responses to your valuable comments:

1. In the introduction on page 1, in the sentence "The rapid growth of the global population, projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050..." there is no reference confirming this statement.

Answer to Comment: According to the reviewer's comment, the reference was added for the above-mentioned sentence to the introduction section.

2. At the end of the "Introduction" section, a brief description of all sections of the article should be added.

Answer to Comment: As pointed out by the reviewer, a brief description of all sections of the article was inserted at the end part of the introduction.

3. It is necessary to add a formal description of AI in the language of mathematical formulas.

Answer to Comment: The table 3 was added to the manuscript, which lists the commonly used mathematical parameters and their descriptions for AI models applied in crop monitoring and prediction.

4. It is necessary to justify the criteria by which it is determined which solution is the best.

Answer to Comment: The evaluation was made based on metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, computational efficiency, ease of implementation, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.

 

5. In Fig. 3, AI models are shown, but in the future, when developing a solution, there is no comparison of them, and there are no modeling results and learning parameters.

Answer to Comment: In the table 3 all the description of the model was added with the references which has the modeling results and learning parameters.

6. It is necessary to add a section related to the selection of parameters for the AI model, for example, using PCA.

Answer to Comment: The section of parameter about selection of parameter was added in text and table as well for Ai models.

7. It is necessary to add a formal description of the problem being solved.

Answer to Comment: The paper already includes an exhaustive review of the most current developments in readily available technology, as well as their obstacles, limits, and future opportunities. This section gives a full assessment of the importance and potential of various technologies in the context of the research.

8. It is necessary to add a section on combating retraining.

Answer to Comment:  In each subsection of the manuscript where the model was discussed combating retraining criteria were added to prevent overfitting and ensuring the model's ability to generalize effectively.

9. Add a table that describes the format and parameters of the data.

Answer to Comment:  Table 2 and 3 was added to describe the format and parameters of the data used in modern technology.

10. You need to add a table with abbreviations.

Answer to Comment:  All the abbreviations mentioned in the text were listed in Table 4.

11. In Fig. 8, the OX axis is not signed.

Answer to Comment: The x-axis was assigned to the figure.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. Line 32-118. This paragraph is too long. Please separate it into several paragraphs. The reference should be numbered. 

2. The flow of the review should be highlighted in the introduction. The objective of this review paper is also unclear. The objective should direct the flow and the content of this review paper. 

3. Figure 2. What is the meaning of different colors in the background of a flowchart? 

4. Line 169. Remote sensing data. The authors review the satellites that provide images for remote sensing applications. However, I did not see any detailed examples of remote sensing applications in improving agriculture practices. 

5. Line 219. Please provide one table to summarize technology applications in modern agriculture.

6. Figure 3. What is the meaning of different colors in the background of a flowchart? 

7. All references should be numbered. Please follow the journal template.

8. Figure 8. The adoption rate for corn is the highest among other crops. I did not see any explanation for this data. What is the most significant factor that influences the improvement of the adoption rate? Support with appropriate references.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your time reviewing our article. Below are responses to your valuable comments:

Line 32-118. This paragraph is too long. Please separate it into several paragraphs. The reference should be numbered. 

Answer to Comment: As per the comment, from line 32-118 all the sentences were split into small sentences and separated into several paragraphs. Also, the references in text were numbered.

2. The flow of the review should be highlighted in the introduction. The objective of this review paper is also unclear. The objective should direct the flow and the content of this review paper. 

Answer to Comment: To maintain the flow of the introduction section the content was revised to make the content more logical and easier to follow.

3. Figure 2. What is the meaning of different colors in the background of a flowchart? 

Answer to Comment: There is no meaning of the different background colors of the flow chart so, colors were removed and kept black and white to avoid a misleading understanding.

4. Line 169. Remote sensing data. The authors review the satellites that provide images for remote sensing applications. However, I did not see any detailed examples of remote sensing applications in improving agriculture practices. 

Answer to Comment: According to the suggestion for line 169, one paragraph of detailed description was added to subsection 2.2.4 which provides detailed examples of remote sensing applications in improving agriculture practices with the supportive references.

 

5. 5. Line 219. Please provide one table to summarize technology applications in modern agriculture.

Answer to Comment: In Table 2, a summary of various technologies applied in modern agriculture was provided, along with their respective limitations and challenges.

6. Figure 3. What is the meaning of different colors in the background of a flowchart? 

Answer to Comment: There is no meaning of the different background colors of the Figure 3. So, colors were removed and kept black and white to avoid a misleading understanding.

7. All references should be numbered. Please follow the journal template.

Answer to Comment: All the references were numbered as per the journal template guidelines.

8. Figure 9. The adoption rate for corn is the highest among other crops. I did not see any explanation for this data. What is the most significant factor that influences the improvement of the adoption rate? Support with appropriate references.

Answer to Comment:  The description of the paragraph has been added just after Figure 9 for clarification for why the adoption rate for corn is the highest among other crops, supported by appropriate references to validate the data.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

General evaluation:

I do have some overriding issues that make me recommend rejection at this stage of the manuscript review for "AI-Driven Future Farming for Achieving Climate-Smart and Sustainable Agriculture." The first one is that "Climate-Smart Agriculture" was not well defined in this manuscript and thus discussed since the term itself forms the title and is among the keywords. Furthermore, there is no critical discussion on water management and linkage of the findings with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These are major gaps, considering that the manuscript focuses on advanced technologies in sustainable agriculture.

The manuscript also suffers from imbalances in its structure and content. It puts more emphasis on AI technologies without sufficient coverage of other important components, such as IoT, which is an important aspect in the holistic coverage of smart agriculture. The figures included in the manuscript are poorly explained or not explained at all, minimizing the clarity and impact of the visual data being presented. The lack of practical examples or case studies that would further substantiate the discussions greatly limits the effectiveness and applicability of the manuscript.

Based on these reasons, I think this manuscript needs more revisions to attain acceptable quality of the publication and significantly contribute to the literature on sustainable agriculture.

Major points:

The first point I'd like to draw attention to is the term “Climate-Smart Agriculture”, which you mention in your title and keyword but don't define for the reader. Later in the text you talk about climate change, climate resilience, microclimate data, and crop prediction with climate but you don't define this issue properly.  Climate-Smart Agriculture represents an holistic approach in managing the entire agricultural landscape with crops, livestock, forests, and fisheries in responding to two challenges: food security and climate change. It places emphasis on sustainable productivity, resilient production concerning variability and change of climate, and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. This issue needs to be better addressed in the paper.

The most sensitive part that I consider to be a gap in the work in question is that the authors have not dealt with these AI and future farming aspects for the issue of water management. This issue is fundamental and needs to be included in the work.

Another point that I consider essential to include in the work is the relationship between these advances that you address in your review and the SDGs of the UN's 2030 agenda. You need to highlight that the integration of advanced technologies like AI, IoT and others strongly aligns with several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land).

The text of the manuscript is unbalanced, giving a lot of emphasis to AI, which is understandable since it is the strongest component of this topic of work, however the subject of IoT specifically, is very little addressed in the paper, this needs to be substantially improved.

The paper mentions studies but there is no detailed analysis of case studies or practical examples. The authors should detail case studies to demonstrate real-world application. Additionally, the discussion lacks critical analysis of the limitations and challenges of AI/IoT/VRT currently in sustainable agriculture.

Specific comments:

The abstract is dense, with a lot of information, some even repeated, but it doesn't say what the purpose of this review paper is or what aspects will be covered in the work, consider improving this. The same goes for the introduction, which gives a nice context but doesn't explain what the purpose of this review paper is: to make the reader understand how these technologies are changing agriculture and making it more sustainable? This point of the justification of your review and its objective need to be clear in the paper.

Line 32:  9.7 billion by 2050, need reference.

Section 2.3: The explanation of Figure 1 in section 2.3 makes no mention of the terms 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0. Why does 3.0 not show GPS? In 4.0 it would have to mention the fact that the systems are real-time. Regarding Figure 2, the description is even worse; the reader has difficulty interpreting it.

Section 3: The predictive analytics, soil health analysis, and resource optimization sections seem to have similar content, which makes them a bit repetitive. The description in Figure 3,4,5 and 6 is very poor. Figure 6 is mentioned in the text even before Figure 5. In the case of Figure 4, it's even worse because it's an IoT figure that appears in the discussion by Deiss et al. [2020], which deals with SVM methods for treating soil, which is totally inappropriate.

There are a number of recent works in the literature on this subject that are important and that I would like to recommend to the authors as a suggestion to enrich the discussion in the paper:

Espinel, R., Herrera-Franco, G., Rivadeneira García, J. L., & Escandón-Panchana, P. (2024). Artificial intelligence in agricultural mapping: A review. Agriculture, 14(7), 1071.

Farooq, M. S., Riaz, S., Abid, A., Umer, T., & Zikria, Y. B. (2020). Role of IoT technology in agriculture: A systematic literature review. Electronics, 9(2), 319.

Spanaki, K., Sivarajah, U., Fakhimi, M., Despoudi, S., & Irani, Z. (2022). Disruptive technologies in agricultural operations: A systematic review of AI-driven AgriTech research. Annals of Operations Research, 308(1), 491-524.

Usigbe, M. J., Asem-Hiablie, S., Uyeh, D. D., Iyiola, O., Park, T., & Mallipeddi, R. (2024). Enhancing resilience in agricultural production systems with AI-based technologies. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 26(9), 21955-21983.

Wei, W., Xiao, M., Duan, W., Wang, H., Zhu, Y., Zhai, C., & Geng, G. (2024). Research progress on autonomous operation technology for agricultural equipment in large Fields. Agriculture, 14(9), 1473.

Xu, J., Gu, B., & Tian, G. (2022). Review of agricultural IoT technology. Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture, 6, 10-22.

Wei, W., Xiao, M., Wang, H., Zhu, Y., Xie, C., & Geng, G. (2024). Research progress of multiple agricultural machines for cooperative operations: A review. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 227, 109628.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your time reviewing our article. Below are responses to your valuable comments:

General evaluation:

I do have some overriding issues that make me recommend rejection at this stage of the manuscript review for "AI-Driven Future Farming for Achieving Climate-Smart and Sustainable Agriculture."

The first one is that "Climate-Smart Agriculture" was not well defined in this manuscript and thus discussed since the term itself forms the title and is among the keywords.

Furthermore, there is no critical discussion on water management and linkage of the findings with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Answer to Comment:

• As the reviewer pointed out about the overriding issues, The paper title “AI-Driven Future Farming for Achieving Climate-Smart and Sustainable Agriculture” is a review paper where we have just studied the most of the available advanced technology for sustainable and smart agriculture are available. For the overriding issues, we tried to cut off some contents and added some content to have the clear reading understanding.
• The term Climate-Smart Agriculture definition was added at the starting section of the introduction part with proper supportive reference.
• This manuscript does not primarily focus on water management and its linkage to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, small sections on water management, such as variable rate irrigation and irrigation scheduling, was included to provide a brief overview of their relevance to the study.

 

The manuscript also suffers from imbalances in its structure and content. It puts more emphasis on AI technologies without sufficient coverage of other important components, such as IoT, which is an important aspect in the holistic coverage of smart agriculture. The figures included in the manuscript are poorly explained or not explained at all, minimizing the clarity and impact of the visual data being presented. The lack of practical examples or case studies that would further substantiate the discussions greatly limits the effectiveness and applicability of the manuscript.

Based on these reasons, I think this manuscript needs more revisions to attain acceptable quality of the publication and significantly contribute to the literature on sustainable agriculture.

Answer to Comment: I appreciate your detailed and critical comments. In response to your suggestions, two additional tables (Table 2 and Table 3) were included to provide sufficient coverage of other important components, such as IoT, machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), AI models, and remote sensing for various agricultural applications. Furthermore, practical examples and case studies have been added to the text to substantiate the discussions and enhance the manuscript's clarity, impact, and contribution to the literature on sustainable agriculture.

Major points:

The first point I'd like to draw attention to is the term “Climate-Smart Agriculture”, which you mention in your title and keyword but don't define for the reader. Later in the text you talk about climate change, climate resilience, microclimate data, and crop prediction with climate but you don't define this issue properly.  Climate-Smart Agriculture represents an holistic approach in managing the entire agricultural landscape with crops, livestock, forests, and fisheries in responding to two challenges: food security and climate change. It places emphasis on sustainable productivity, resilient production concerning variability and change of climate, and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. This issue needs to be better addressed in the paper.

The most sensitive part that I consider to be a gap in the work in question is that the authors have not dealt with these AI and future farming aspects for the issue of water management. This issue is fundamental and needs to be included in the work.

Another point that I consider essential to include in the work is the relationship between these advances that you address in your review and the SDGs of the UN's 2030 agenda. You need to highlight that the integration of advanced technologies like AI, IoT and others strongly aligns with several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land).

The text of the manuscript is unbalanced, giving a lot of emphasis to AI, which is understandable since it is the strongest component of this topic of work, however the subject of IoT specifically, is very little addressed in the paper, this needs to be substantially improved.

The paper mentions studies but there is no detailed analysis of case studies or practical examples. The authors should detail case studies to demonstrate real-world application. Additionally, the discussion lacks critical analysis of the limitations and challenges of AI/IoT/VRT currently in sustainable agriculture

Answer to Comment:

• A precise description of CSA was introduced, highlighting it as an integrated approach to food security and climate change that incorporates sustainable production, climatic resilience, and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
• A section was added to address AI's involvement in water management, including strategies such as variable rate irrigation, irrigation scheduling, and improving water-use efficiency, emphasizing its relevance in sustainable agriculture.
• The manuscript's content also included in conclusion section how advanced technologies such as AI, IoT, and remote sensing align with SDGs 2 (Zero Hunger), 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), 13 (Climate Action), and 15 (Life on Land), emphasizing their role in promoting sustainable practices.
• The IoT component was expanded to cover applications for real-time crop monitoring, precision irrigation, and soil analysis. Table 2 discusses the challenges and integration of IoT with AI for smart agriculture, which also includes the challenges and limitations of other advanced technology.

Specific comments:

1. The abstract is dense, with a lot of information, some even repeated, but it doesn't say what the purpose of this review paper is or what aspects will be covered in the work, consider improving this. The same goes for the introduction, which gives a nice context but doesn't explain what the purpose of this review paper is: to make the reader understand how these technologies are changing agriculture and making it more sustainable? This point of the justification of your review and its objective need to be clear in the paper.

Answer to Comment: As per the reviewer’s comments, the abstract was revised to be more concise, focusing on the key aspects covered in the review paper. Additionally, the introduction section was updated, with the objectives clearly outlined at the end to highlight the scope of the review.

2. Line 32:  9.7 billion by 2050, need reference.

Answer to Comment: Reference for the sentence 9.7 billion by 2050 was added.

3. Section 2.3: The explanation of Figure 1 in section 2.3 makes no mention of the terms 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0. Why does 3.0 not show GPS? In 4.0 it would have to mention the fact that the systems are real-time. Regarding Figure 2, the description is even worse; the reader has difficulty interpreting it.

Answer to Comment: The explanation for Figure 1 in Section 2.3 was revised to include the terms 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0, clarifying their significance. Similarly, the description of Figure 2 was rewritten to improve clarity and ensure easier interpretation for readers.

4. Section 3: The predictive analytics, soil health analysis, and resource optimization sections seem to have similar content, which makes them a bit repetitive. The description in Figure 3,4,5 and 6 is very poor. Figure 6 is mentioned in the text even before Figure 5. In the case of Figure 4, it's even worse because it's an IoT figure that appears in the discussion by Deiss et al. [2020], which deals with SVM methods for treating soil, which is totally inappropriate.

Answer to Comment:

The repetitive content in predictive analytics, soil health analysis, and resource optimization was streamlined. Descriptions for Figures 3, 4, 5, and 6 were improved for clarity. The order of Figures 5 and 6 were corrected, and the inappropriate IoT figure (Figure 4) was replaced to align with the context.

 

5. There are a number of recent works in the literature on this subject that are important and that I would like to recommend to the authors as a suggestion to enrich the discussion in the paper:

Answer to Comment:

We appreciated your recommendations and carefully reviewed the provided references, incorporating all relevant ones to gain better insights and enrich the discussion, ensuring the manuscript reflected the latest advancements in the literature.

Thank you for suggesting this article. We found it highly beneficial and have cited it accordingly.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have taken into account all the comments, and all corrections have been made in proper quality. The article does not require any additional edits.

Author Response

Dear Editor in chief,

We have revised our manuscript in accordance with the reviewers' comments. Below is a summary of our responses to each checklist item:

(I) Ensure all references are relevant to the content of the manuscript.

We have reviewed all references in the manuscript and ensured their relevance to the content. Any outdated or irrelevant references have been removed or replaced with more appropriate citations.

(II) Highlight any revisions to the manuscript, so editors and reviewers can see any changes made.

All adjustments made in response to reviewer comments are highlighted in the manuscript for easy identification using the track change mode.

(III) Provide a cover letter to respond to the reviewers’ comments and explain, point by point, the details of the manuscript revisions.

A cover letter addressing the reviewers' comments was provided which includes a detailed, point-by-point explanation of how we have incorporated the suggested changes.

(IV) If the reviewer(s) recommended references, critically analyze them to ensure that their inclusion would enhance your manuscript. If you believe these references are unnecessary, you should not include them.

We critically analyzed the references recommended by the reviewers and only relevant references were incorporated to enhance the manuscript.

(V) If you found it impossible to address certain comments in the review reports, include an explanation in your appeal.

we have provided explanations in the cover letter for those comments could not be fully addressed.

Thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors provided sufficient replies.

Author Response

Dear Editor in chief,

We have revised our manuscript in accordance with the reviewers' comments. Below is a summary of our responses to each checklist item:

(I) Ensure all references are relevant to the content of the manuscript.

We have reviewed all references in the manuscript and ensured their relevance to the content. Any outdated or irrelevant references have been removed or replaced with more appropriate citations.

(II) Highlight any revisions to the manuscript, so editors and reviewers can see any changes made.

All adjustments made in response to reviewer comments are highlighted in the manuscript for easy identification using the track change mode.

(III) Provide a cover letter to respond to the reviewers’ comments and explain, point by point, the details of the manuscript revisions.

A cover letter addressing the reviewers' comments was provided which includes a detailed, point-by-point explanation of how we have incorporated the suggested changes.

(IV) If the reviewer(s) recommended references, critically analyze them to ensure that their inclusion would enhance your manuscript. If you believe these references are unnecessary, you should not include them.

We critically analyzed the references recommended by the reviewers and only relevant references were incorporated to enhance the manuscript.

(V) If you found it impossible to address certain comments in the review reports, include an explanation in your appeal.

we have provided explanations in the cover letter for those comments could not be fully addressed.

Thank you!