Abstract
Food production and consumption account for a significant share of the impact of various pressing and important environmental concerns such as climate change, eutrophication, and loss of biodiversity. In this work, a bibliometric analysis of the last 50 years of research papers, written in English and indexed on Scopus database, was carried out to highlight the evolution of the global scientific research in the environmental assessment of food production (EAFP). The research papers in EAFP started to significantly increase from 2005, being most frequently published by the Journal of Cleaner Production and International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. The United States of America was the first publishing country, followed by China, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Wheat, rice, fish, maize, and milk were the food items mainly studied, with different importance depending on the authors’ publishing country. Life Cycle Analysis, Carbon Footprint, and Water Footprint were the first three standard methods used to assess climate change, energy consumption, and environmental impact. The Wageningen University, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Research Centre, and China Agricultural University were the main publishing research centers. All the papers published worldwide received 18.1 citations per paper, the UK and Chinese papers being those mostly and minimally cited, respectively. Over the last five years, this research field largely aimed to managing the agricultural practices, mitigating global warming and water use, assuring food security and sustainable food consumption, while minimizing food waste formation. Such an objective evaluation of this research topic might help guide researchers on where to address their future research work.
Highlights
Earth’s environment is affected by human activities
Food production accounts for a significant share of the total impact of several important environmental categories, such as climate change, eutrophication and loss of biodiversity
The main aim of this work was to trace global research trends and scientific evolution in the environmental assessment of food production (EAFP) research from 1970 to 2020, by resorting to a bibliometric, textual, and map analysis to provide a basis for the comprehensive understanding of current research and to highlight the countries, institutions, authors, and journals more productive and influent in this research field
Summary
Earth’s environment is affected by human activities. The increasing human overpopulation and its resulting adverse impacts affect the Earth’s environment through ocean acidification, global warming, biodiversity loss, soil erosion, air pollution and undrinkable water. Like renewable and non-renewable materials; water consumed; land used for agricultural, forest, and grazing areas; raw material extraction or private housing [4]; and emissions such as greenhouse gases (GHG) and several other pollutants, namely SOX , NOX , and O3. Food production accounts for a significant share of the total impact of several important environmental categories, such as climate change, eutrophication and loss of biodiversity. Agricultural production involves the manufacture of fertilizers, pesticides, equipment and energy, as well as land-use change, and is responsible for the great majority (72–82%) of the above GHG emissions.
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