Overall comments:

This paper uses the UVic ESCM earth system model to evaluate and assess the effectiveness and impacts of agricultural carbon dioxide removal. Carbon dioxide removal is an important issue in the era of climate change, and nature based climate solutions are potential pathways to partially address the climate crisis. Therefore, the issue that the paper is trying to address is relevant to the broad geoscience community. The results and analysis on the model simulation are comprehensive and thorough, and several insights are highlighted based on the results.

However, there are some major issues of this paper, including language and writing, methodological rigor, and the lack of discussion on the limitations. I encourage the authors to address these issues and improve the paper before publishing.

Major comments:

1. The writing of this paper needs to be improved. Although the topic of this paper is of broad interest to the geoscience community, the way it is presented lacks clarity, especially the introduction section. In the introduction, the authors only mention the research gap in the last paragraph, which is confusing and unconventional for an introduction in a research paper. Instead, I suggest the authors restructure the introduction section to follow a more clear logic, for example, general topic – research gap – how this paper addresses the gap. 

2. There should be more explanation and discussions on how agricultural CDR is implemented. The paper only says that the agricultural CDR was achieved by prescribing an atmosphere-to-soil carbon flux in agricultural areas, and any changes in natural carbon storage and fluxes occurring will be considered as feedback effects. While I believe may be reasonable to do so, a more thorough explanation on how each type of CDR is implemented in real life (e.g., nutrient management, reforestations, etc.), and if it can be more accurately incorporated into the model should be provided. If there are more accurate ways of modeling them, the authors should adopt them. Also, even if the simplification is reasonable, the implications of this simplification should also be discussed. For example, will there be any constraint that the CDR and the feedback jointly have to satisfy? 

3.While the simulation results are comprehensive and thorough, the paper does not provide any uncertainty quantification, nor does it discuss any implications about uncertainty. I suggest the authors use some commonly used uncertainty quantification metrics for the results. If the uncertainty quantification is too challenging given the context or too cumbersome for this paper, possible sources of uncertainty and its implications should be at least discussed.

4. I suggest the authors add a dedicated session to discuss the implications.

The manuscript investigates the potential for agricultural carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to mitigate climate change by simulating soil carbon sequestration using the University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (UVic ESCM).

However, the paper’s simplified treatment of agricultural CDR presents a key limitation by applying a uniform atmosphere-to-soil carbon flux across agricultural areas. This generalization does not account for the significant variability in the efficacy of different agricultural management practices, which critically affect carbon retention and sequestration longevity. Therefore, it's difficult to judge the robustness and uncertainty level of the assessed numbers. A comparison between the current study and previous assessment would be appreciated.

Missed Mechanistic Detail:

Treating all agricultural CDR methods as a uniform flux from the atmosphere to the soil ignores the inherent complexities of soil carbon turnover. Different agricultural techniques impact microbial activity, soil structure, and decomposition rates differently. For example, practices that increase soil aeration (like tilling) could accelerate carbon release through respiration, undermining long-term sequestration.

• Biochar: This method results in long-term carbon sequestration, as biochar can persist in soils for hundreds to thousands of years. Its resistance to decomposition means that biochar acts as a more permanent carbon sink.
• No-Till Farming: While this method reduces soil disturbance and thereby helps increase soil organic carbon in the short term, its long-term efficacy may be more variable. The retained carbon could be vulnerable to re-release through natural processes like soil respiration.
• Cover Cropping and Crop Rotations: These practices can increase soil organic matter, but the degree of sequestration depends heavily on crop types, climate, and soil properties. They generally offer more temporary sequestration benefits compared to biochar.

Limited Exploration of Economic and Practical Feasibility: While the authors mention the costs associated with low, moderate, and high CDR scenarios, there is no rigorous exploration of how economically feasible these interventions would be, or how they could be integrated into current agricultural systems without significant trade-offs.

Another significant limitation of the paper lies in its failure to rigorously address uncertainties inherent in the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) used in the simulations. These pathways—SSP1-1.9, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5—represent different global development and emissions scenarios, but the uncertainties associated with these scenarios are not thoroughly explored. 

Overall, the manuscript is in good shape but could benefit from further refinement.