Evolution of the Global Scientific Research on the Environmental Impact of Food Production from 1970 to 2020

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.