Dear RC1,

Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript and for your feedback.

This is a valid and important point. While the research questions are answered in the Results, the Conclusions are rather generally worded. We propose to expand the Conclusions so that they explicitly  and directly answer the research questions.  

Please find the proposed revised version of the Conclusions below.

Best regards,

Vojtech Cemus

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Conclusions

Companies’ efforts to implement sustainability standards in their supply chains are a potentially important instrument of farmland soil sustainability. While companies show a rising interest in combating market risks related to soil degradation, the practical interventions have remained in early phases so far.

We (i) found that food retail industry, a key sector in agrifood supply chains, generally considers soil sustainability as part of its sustainability strategy. Sustainability standards that include soil protection criteria were applied by 41% of the sampled retail companies. However, (ii) the sustainability standards used by companies tend to have only a limited impact on soil protection. Only 56 of the 165 third-party standards relevant to conventional agriculture regulate soil management to a greater extent than simply mentioning its importance. Surprisingly, there was no significant relationship between the impact of the standard and its market penetration (hectares of certified production area). (iii) Schemes that emphasise the environment are more likely to have a greater impact on soil, particularly for criteria related to the erosion, soil conservation and cover crops.

There seem to be several major reasons for this. Companies focus their supply chain interventions on globally important environmental risks such as loss of high-biodiversity habitats, particularly in the tropics, and more easily manageable topics such as pesticide use management. Also, soil sustainability standards require relatively complex interventions and criteria. Provisions in the existing standards tend to be too generic to have a substantial impact.

Based on a case study, we (iv) found that the key practical considerations for companies appear to be commodity-based (as opposed to farm-level) and in-house (as opposed to a third-party certification) approaches. They also prefer standards that are based on farming practices rather than soil properties. Cost, administrative requirements and complexity of standards are the main concerns.

Soils are complex, and effective sustainability standards require practical solutions that are feasible for farmers to implement and for companies to standardise, measure, and control. Companies' preference for universal rules across markets is constrained by the variability of soils, farming practices, and regulatory environments. Unlike directly procured crops like fresh fruit or vegetables, complex supply chains (e.g., in processed foods) may require active engagement of a wider range of companies across markets as well as other relevant stakeholders. Soil and sustainability research can contribute with the development of relevant tools such as multidimensional sustainability criteria, compliance metrics, and spatially explicit, commodity-relevant datasets. Some of these approaches can be reasonably applied to other complex dimensions of agrifood supply chain sustainability such as small-scale farmland biodiversity.

Dear referee,

Thank you very much for your valuable feedback and your time. We very much appreciate your insightful comments and will consider your suggestions when working on the updated version.

On behalf of the research team,

Vojtech Cemus

Dear Referee,

we are now finalising our revised version. Thank you for the useful comments that will greatly improve the paper. Here we address each of your comments and suggestions:

Issue 1: The paper mixes VSS on tropical products globally traded with an approach focused on local, temperate products, usually not globally traded with purchased through contracts. These are two very different situations, governed in very different ways.

We do not necessarily agree that the key distinction is between tropical, globally traded, and temperate, locally trade crops. The market model of many of the typical temperate (e.g. cereals or oilseeds) arguably resembles globally traded tropical cash crops, although the physical distance is shorter. Nevertheless, as far as we understand, the suggested solution is the one raised in issue 6 and the concluding paragraph (drop the case study), and we agree with that (see below).

Issue 2: The paper misses out on manufactured goods that are governed by different VSS. As a result, the paper has missed the world’s largest platform, SAI platform. SAI has recently developed standards for regenerative agriculture, focusing on soil health.

This is very good point. We are aware of this. We had to choose a sector for data gathering and food retail was an apparent choice since it covers a wide range of farm commodities. However, there are obvious trade-offs and less intensive reporting regarding manufactured goods by retail companies is one of them. SAI appears in the standards data (section 3.2. – Impacts of VSSs), but not in the retail data (section 3.1.), because companies do not report it. We are adding a paragraph on this issue to the Discussion.

Issue 3: The paper misses out on recent developments on environmental impact reporting in food systems (e.g., PEF) in general and on soil health indicators, MRV systems, etc., such as in France and the Netherlands (soil health index, Rabobank, Soil Heroes, Soil Capital, Earthworm, etc.) in particular. An important recent development is the EU’s Mission Soil. Refer to the EJP Soil and the many Horizon Europe projects and the JRC efforts currently undertakes on these matters. Recent literature on these topics has not been used.

This is also a good point. We will expand the Discussion so that it covers the emerging data and indicators infrastructure. Although often developed for other purposes, these initiatives can serve as useful tools in application for VSSs, e.g. for advanced metrics.

Issue 4: An important driver for companies is the goal to achieve net zero and the obligation to report on scope 3 emissions. The EU’s CSR directive has been a major milestone in this respect, broadening the scope from carbon to other environmental issues. Refer to Deconinck et al. (2023) for a recent overview (https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/jbad018).

Carbon footprint is an important angle of soil sustainability and we agree that it (and the relevant reporting) is a strong driver for business engagement. We will discuss this in the Introduction.

Issue 5: The methodology is not well explained. More detail is needed here: what kind of coding is used in part 1, how is content analysis performed in part 2 and particularly how is researcher bias addressed when interpreting content in part 3 and finally part 4 misses any details on the case study: how many experts, what was their background, how were the workshops conducted, have interviews and workshop data be transcribed and coded, etc.

We will expand the Methodology section, specifically parts 2.1. and 2.2. as suggested. Concerning part 2.3, the data we used was extracted directly from Standards‘ Map, so no additional researcher’s subjective assessment was involved. The methodological issues regarding 2.4. are void since we will follow the suggestion to remove the case study entirely.

Issue 6: Due to all the previous issues, the Czech case study contributes little to the paper. The methodology is not well explained, but also the results seem to be very limited.

Regarding the issue 6, we will follow the suggestion and remove the case study entirely.

Once again, we thank you for your useful and insightful comments.

On behalf of the research team,

Vojtech Cemus