Twenty Years of Socio-Economic Research on Organic Agriculture Across the World: Looking at the Past to Be Ready for the Future

Leonardo Cei (), Gianluca Stefani and Luca Rossetto
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Leonardo Cei: TESAF Department, University of Padova, Viale dell’Università 16, 35020 Legnaro, Italy
Gianluca Stefani: DISEI Department, University of Firenze, Via delle Pandette 32, 50127 Firenze, Italy
Luca Rossetto: TESAF Department, University of Padova, Viale dell’Università 16, 35020 Legnaro, Italy

Agriculture, 2024, vol. 14, issue 11, 1-23

Abstract: The world organic sector has evolved in a rapid way over the last few decades, driven by consumer interest, producer and retailer strategies, as well as by the evolving normative context. This growth has stimulated an increase in academic research, particularly in socio-economic research. The present work aims to understand the evolution of organic socio-economic research in terms of the research themes covered within this field, their relative importance, and how this importance has changed over time. The implementation of a structural topic model on scientific abstracts from the last 20 years allowed us to identify three broad areas of interest for organic socio-economic researchers: consumers, production, and society. The relevance of these strands varies in different areas of the world, mostly aligning with the prominent aspects of local organic sectors. This signals a good integration of organic socio-economic research within local contexts, with the possible development of place-based skills to be exploited within the global debate on organic agriculture. Overall, a reasonably strong imbalance emerges, with consumer-focused studies being more prominent than production-focused ones, especially those investigating producers’ economic results. The latter seems to call for renewed attention on and analysis of the organic sector, assisted by robust evidence on both ends of the organic supply chain.

Keywords: organic research; text analysis; literature review; organic farming; organic agriculture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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