Exploring Community-Supported Agriculture through Maslow’s Hierarchy: A Systematic Review of Research Themes and Trends

Abstract

Community-supported agriculture (CSA) has emerged as a pivotal model for sustainable and humanistic agricultural practices, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between food production, consumption, and sustainable ecosystems. Despite the growing interest, a comprehensive analysis of research themes and trends within the CSA framework remains sparse. This paper undertakes a systematic review of CSA literature from 1999 to 2023, identifying evolving research hotspots, dominant themes, and prospective directions by keyword analysis to corroborate Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. The research analysis location is categorized into four temporal phases, revealing a geographical expansion from North America to encompass Asia, Africa, and other continents. This expansion corroborates Maslow’s theory, illustrating a global shift from fulfilling basic physiological needs towards recognizing sustainable practices, particularly in developing regions. The results of temporal trends (5 phases) and the hotspots of keyword analysis support each other by showing a societal shift from basic sustenance to a deeper understanding of nutrition and diet. Most of the recent research keywords are grouped into the “environment” and “health and education” categories, indicating an increasing emphasis on transforming the food system and nutrition education. This review suggests conducting an integrated analysis that links the various stages of the food supply chain with the criteria outlined in the Sustainable Agriculture Matrix (SAM). It highlights that the “environment” theme is a stage of building up esteem and self-realization that needs to be unfolded in the future, given that most research on community-supported agriculture (CSA) focuses on the “economy and society” aspect and consumption stage, which burnish self-morality in the theory of Maslow. Overall, this review proposes an analysis of the relevance among different subject categories and between food supply chain stages, which reveals that the trend of research under CSA development is accorded to the theory of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and calls for a more holistic approach to agricultural research that considers ecological, health, and social imperatives.