Subsidies’ Impacts on Technical–Economic Indicators in Large Crop Farms

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Va rugam sa vedeti atasamentul.

 

Thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

After reading this manuscript, I had some major reservations about it, which prevented me from recommending its publication in its current format.  

1)   Abstract: It is too long and repeats the same information. The abstract should be short and precise.

2)   The whole introduction section is just one paragraph. It needs to be separated into several paragraphs.

3)   I think the authors need to address the fact that there are different types of subsidies to agriculture (such as direct and indirect, etc.). Financial assistance is just one type of subsidy.

4)   In the introduction sections, the authors need to address the farming in Romania (the average scale, how many farms, etc.), which is important to explain why you chose just two farms (3000 ha and 600 ha) to study.

5)   What are the contributions of this research to the current literature? The authors need to address this after the literature review.

6)   What are the objectives of this research?

7)   I have a major concern about the fact that only two farms were chosen for this research (the design of this research). 

8) There is not enough statistical analysis (only some descriptive analysis).

9)   Some figures are not clearly presented in the results section, which is very difficult to understand.

10) Conclusions are only a summary of results. What are the policy implications? What is the contribution of your study? What should future studies focus on? The authors need to address these issues.

11) This manuscript is very badly formatted. For the titles of figures, they should be listed as “Figure 1, Figure 2…” and under each figure (not “Graph 1, Graph 2…” above the figure).

12) This manuscript needs a lot of improvement before it is submitted for review. Such as Lines 637-642: “Acknowledgements” is in the middle of the manuscript. 

Some moderate editing of the English language is required.

Author Response

Va rugam sa vedeti atasamentul!

Thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper assesses the contribution and impact of their subsidies on the main technical-economic indicators of crop farms in Romania, using data of two farms (600 ha and 3000 ha) from 2019-2020, adopting statistical analysis.

I have a few comments and suggestions for the authors:

1. The quality of the abstract is very poor and confusing, which does not reflect the main findings of the article.

2. The authors also lack explaining the why, what, and how of the research question. The choice of methodology also needs clear debate between competing choices and why did the authors selected a particular one.

3.The discussion also does not align with clear contribution to theory and practice. The generalizability of the results is a concern and the authors have not addressed this issue clearly.

Author Response

Va rugam sa vedeti atasamentul!

 

Thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Manuscript ID

agriculture-2522514

General: This can be a stimulating and useful article with significant revision. I note numerous flaws, but I would like to give the authors a chance to explain themselves and try again.

Few significant issues that came up during my review:

General: Please use subscripts and superscripts where applicable.

1. Please improve the manuscript title.

2. Abstract needs much improvement it’s so lengthy try to refer to journal guidelines.  

3. What does your article bring to the research field that other papers did not address? I think this must be clearly established to highlight the reader about the novelty statement of this article.

4. The English grammar and style should be checked throughout the paper.

5. Please add clear objectives of the study.

6. The figures can be improved in Quality and resolution.

7. Conclusions and recommendations must be clearly related to the results. These relationships should be included in the text.

8. The authors should mention the main limitations of this study at the end of the conclusion section in one paragraph.

9. Follow the sequence of citations.

10. Refer to journal Instructions for Authors for more improvement.

 

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Manuscript ID

agriculture-2522514

General: This can be a stimulating and useful article with significant revision. I note numerous flaws, but I would like to give the authors a chance to explain themselves and try again.

Few major issues that came up during my review:

General: Please use subscripts and superscripts where applicable.

1. Please improve the manuscript title.

2. Abstract needs much improvement it’s so lengthy try to refer to journal guideline.  

3. What does your article bring to the research field that other papers did not addressed. I think this must be clearly established to highlight the reader about the novelty statement of this article.

4. The English grammar and style should be checked throughout the paper.

5. Please add clear objectives of the study.

6. The figures can be improved in Quality and resolution.

7. Conclusions and recommendations must be clearly related to the results. These relationships should be included in the text.

8. The authors should mention the main limitations of this study at the end of the conclusion section in one paragraph.

9. Follow the sequence of citations.

10. Refer to journal Instructions for Authors for more improvement.

 

 

Author Response

Va rugam sa vedeti atasamentul!

 

Thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has been improved a lot by the authors compared to the old version.

Minor revision for English

Author Response

Va rugam sa vedeti atasamentul.

 

Cu multumiri!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1)   In the introduction sections, the authors addressed farming in Romania (the average scale, how many farms, etc.), which is an improvement from the first version. But the average farm size is 194.78 ha, which is hard to explain why you chose just two farms (3000 ha and 600 ha) to study.

 

 

2)   In “response to reviewer 2,” the author mentioned, “The work is based on the data from a research project in which a series of farms of different sizes were selected, but in this work we subjected to statistical analysis only two of these representative farms in terms of size and relevance for the research.”  It seems this study has a lot of data related to different sizes of farms. I would suggest the authors include more of this data related to different sizes of farms. It is very hard to explain why only two farms are presented in this study.

n/a

Author Response

Va rugam sa vedeti atasamentul.

 

Cu multumiri!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I have reviewed the revised version. The author has made revisions according to the review comments, and the quality of the article has improved. However, I still believe that the method used in the paper is too general and the sample size is insufficient, which leads to very limited conclusions.

Author Response

Va rugam sa vedeti atasamentul.

 

Cu multumiri!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

I have carefully checked my comments and suggestions were addressed very well by the authors. I recommend the manuscript is acceptable and suitable for publication in recent form.

Congratulations to the authors.

 Just Minor editing of the English language is required. Please carefully check. Thanks

Author Response

Va rugam sa vedeti atasamentul.

 

Cu multumiri!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx