Differences and Factors of Raw Milk Productivity between China and the United States

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript addresses the input-output efficiency model of raw milk production in China and the United States. The findings concluded that China’s raw milk production should rely on a technology-based model instead of relying solely on the quantitative increase of factor inputs. However, the findings might be of great interest to decision-makers and the dairy industry in China rather than to scientific communities. Also, more information is needed on the dairy cattle breeds in both countries and a brief description of feeding management and farm management, and which kinds of technology are adopted in the USA but not common in China. Moreover, these findings could be extracted from some technical bulletins and dairy associations and might be better published in technical journals linked to dairy stakeholders in China. The concept of the current paper has been highlighted in the following paper:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8910074/

 

Specific comments

L23: what does maintenance expenses mean? It may be misunderstood with animal requirements for maintenance

 

L53: yield per unit is 83,00 kg/head/year: Correct 83,00 to 8,300

L57: breeding technology is repeated, please delete

L63: 750,000, is there a reference for this value?

L116: GDP? Please give full words, and revise the whole text for writing full words before abbreviation where relevant

L271-273: please add references, if any

L283: for data source: please insert a link for a data source for both China and USA organizations mentioned in the text

L306: test-test, please revise, might be a T-test

Table: explain the statistical abbreviations (S.E, T,….etc) in the table footnote

The discussion is simple and does not contain any references for any comparative studies

 

L452: “but its contribution to China's raw milk production,…” this sentence seems missing something

Author Response

Thank you for spending valuable time providing quite useful comments on our work. Your comments have helped us to further improve the manuscript. We have carefully revised the manuscript according to the reviewer’s suggestions. Please find our revisions in the file named Referene 1 Response. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for providing me an opportunity to review the manuscript "Differences and factors of raw milk productivity between 2 China and the United States" and authors did wonderful job by focusing on an important topic of raw milk productivity. I have following suggestions/comments which authors should address before acceptance of this article.

1.      Please write one sentence to sum up the study at the end of the abstract section.

2.      The first paragraph of the introduction is very confusing. I couldn't figure out which country, the United States or China, is an exporter and which is an importer. Please amend lines 35–45 of the first paragraph. Please also look at lines 99-100.

3.      The introduction needs much more literary support than it presently has. Please also provide the source of the figures that you mentioned in the introduction section. For example, look at Line 58-87. The authors have quoted many figures but did not provide a single source (citation).

4.      Can authors also include the research gaps this study wants to fill in literature in one last paragraph of the "Literature Review" section?

5.      Can authors elaborate on the reasons and motivations behind the comparisons between the USA and China? It is necessary to have something in common to make a comparison. Please also discuss those similarities when comparing these two countries. More importantly, when you compare the productivity of a sector in two countries, you assume the same technology level. So, what about technology differences at both countries' farms?

6.      The authors have taken only four inputs (feed expense, health and epidemic prevention expense, fuel and impetus expense, and maintenance expense). What about other factors that affect the productivity of animals, like land and labor?

7.      The discussion part seems no more different than the introduction part. Please compare and discuss your results in the light of previous available studies by finding relevant literature.

8.      Conclusion should not be merely summary of the results. It should also contain some policy implications with respect to relevant results.

9.      Please also discuss the limitations of the study in last paragraph of discussion.

Author Response

Thank you for spending valuable time providing quite useful comments on our work. Your comments have helped us to further improve the manuscript. We have carefully revised the manuscript according to the reviewer’s suggestions. Please find our revisions in the file named Referene 2 Response

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The revised version of the manuscript has been greatly improved and the authors fully answered the comments.

Only a little work still needed for English editing

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for addressing all my comments.