Agriculture 4.0 as Enabler of Sustainable Agri-Food: A Proposed Taxonomy

Abstract

Global population growth, climate change, and food safety are some of the challenges that the agri-food sector is current facing. Addressing these in a sustainable way requires the adoption of sustainable-oriented innovations capable of developing new knowledge and reshaping production methods and business models. Digitalization and technological evolution in the agri-food sector, culminating within Agriculture 4.0 (A4.0), represent the latest revolution, as testified by the extant body of knowledge. The lack of a systematic model to map the body of knowledge in A4.0 and how it addresses the agri-food sustainability challenges represents the input of our review. We propose a systematic literature review to discover the research routes in A4.0, increasing the understanding of this paradigm as agri-food sustainability enabler. A taxonomy, composed of 566 terms grouped in seven categories representative of the extant research routes, is proposed: the names assumed by agri-food digitalization process, the main aims and issues of A4.0, the features of the agricultural sector, the parameters monitorable and calculable through A4.0, data, and technologies. It emerged that A4.0 absolve the role of enabler in sustainability agri-food providing to the company a set of data and technological sustainable oriented innovations able to solve, according to an interdisciplinary approach, environmental, social, and economic challenges. The findings identify research gaps and theoretical and practical implications for a wide range of stakeholders, such as engineering managers, agri-food companies, researchers, or companies involved in the web content analysis. Limitations and future research route complete the study.