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RURAL SOCIOLOGY • Cienc. Rural 55 (03) • 2025 • https://doi.org/10.1590/0103-8478cr20230134 linkcopy

Open-access Mapping of scientific production around the sustainable development goals - SDGS and food production

Mapeamento da produção científica em torno dos objetivos do desenvolvimento sustentável-ODS e produção de alimentos

AuthorshipSCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

    ABSTRACT:

    This research aimed to understand the subject regarding the 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals and food production through literature reviews covering the timespan from 2001 to 2021. Methodologically, this paper is framed as a literature review and uses the Scopus platform to get to the database, selecting 243 papers. The results pointed out that the United States presented the highest number of published documents (126). When it comes to the origin of affiliation, the universities located in the Netherlands (University of Wageningen) and Canada (University of Guelph) present together the highest number of published documents (24). Among the keywords, the most frequent are food safety, followed by the food supply, sustainability, and climate change. Finally, regarding the main subjects tackled during the analyzed time period, it was verified that the issues concerning public policies, land use, and food safety were discussed throughout the entire timespan. In turn, the most recent period, mainly covering the articles published from the year 2021 on, inserts into the discussion agenda the aspects of Covid-19, the pandemic, and its impacts, especially influenced by the setting experienced worldwide. At the same time, other subjects less discussed took the spotlight, also emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, such as digital agriculture and digital technology, which began to have major relevance. At last, it is possible to infer that reaching sustainable development goals is even more challenging under a pandemic context experienced by all the countries from 2020 to the present day.

    Key words:
    bibliometrics; millennium development goals; food production; agrifood systems

    RESUMO:

    O objetivo deste trabalho foi compreender a temática em torno dos Objetivos do Desenvolvimento Sustentável Agenda 2030 e a produção de alimentos através de uma análise bibliográfica compreendendo o período de 2001 a 2021. Metodologicamente o estudo se enquadra como uma revisão bibliográfica e se utilizou a plataforma Scopus para obtenção da base de dados, sendo selecionados 243 artigos. Os resultados apontaram que os Estados Unidos apresentaram o maior número de documentos publicados (126). Em relação a afiliação de origem, universidades localizadas na Holanda (Universidy de Wageningen) e Canadá (Universidy de Guelph) são as que apresentam juntas o maior número de documentos publicados (24). Entre as palavras-chaves a que mais aparece é segurança alimentar, seguida de fornecimento de alimentos, sustentabilidade e mudanças climáticas. Finalmente, no que diz respeito às principais temáticas abordadas durante o período analisado, constatou-se que questões relacionadas a políticas públicas, uso da terra e segurança alimentar foram discutidas ao longo de todo período analisado. Já no período mais recente, que compreende sobretudo os artigos publicados a partir do ano de 2021, insere-se na agenda de discussão, influenciada pelo cenário vivenciado no mundo todo, aspectos relacionados à pandemia, Covid 19 e seus impactos. Ao mesmo tempo, ganharam relevância temas ainda pouco discutidos, os quais emergem também a partir da pandemia do Covid 19, dentre eles a agricultura digital e tecnologias digitais, que passaram a ter grande relevância. Finalmente, é possível inferir que alcançar os objetivos do desenvolvimento sustentável se tornou ainda mais desafiador em um contexto de Pandemia, vivenciado em todos os países do mundo no período de 2020 aos dias atuais.

    Palavras-chave:
    bibliometria; objetivos do milênio; produção de alimentos; sistemas agroalimentares

    INTRODUCTION

    The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG) were proposed by the UN board in 2000, setting goals for the next 15 years (from 2000 to 2015). Significant progress in the reduction of global poverty, access to education, and drinkable water was achieved. With the success of the first project, there was a desire to continue the work already performed, establishing new goals for the subsequent 15 years, which resulted in the expansion of the MDGs to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are the successors to the Millenium Goals (FAO, 2021).

    During Rio+20, the United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012, the 193 member-states from the organization discussed sustainable development, which is a way to evolve meeting the needs of the current generations without compromising the existence of the future ones. On that occasion, the SDGs were created in the form of an action plan with 17 global goals to be complied with until 2030 in order to enable all countries to grow and cooperate under the scope of such a sustainability agenda. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) corroborate from the elimination of poverty to the response to climate change, education, women’s equality, as well as environmental protection (UN, 2022).

    The SDGs have been gaining relevance and have been the focus of academic research, especially when concerning the transversal challenges of society, such as climate changes, political insecurity, market instability, food safety, and others (BRUNORI et al., 2016; GALLI et al., 2020). In such a setting, economical, social, environmental, and institutional aspects are fundamental for planning and implementing successful incentive policies.

    One of the main objectives of these 17 goals that came into force on January 1st, 2016 is to transform the world and make it a better place for everyone (CAMPI et al., 2021; LINDSAY et al., 2021). In particular, the second SDG (zero hunger) aims to simultaneously address global environmental sustainability and food security challenges, including improving nutrition that leads to a healthy life (ERICKSEN, 2008; MABE et al., 2021; FAO, 2021). Another goal that aims to enhance consumption patterns is SDG 12 (ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns), which seeks to eradicate food insecurity and hunger, improve the sustainable management of water, face climate change, and enhance sustainability in water and land ecosystems (FAO, 2021).

    It is crucial to remark that the performance of these SDGs will contribute especially to the compliance of the other goals from the 2030 Agenda, especially poverty eradication, health improvement, access to drinkable water and sewage, decent work, and reduced inequality. (CAMPI et al., 2021; GALLI et al., 2020). It is worth highlighting that one of the main gaps related to food production and access seems to be broadly defined by the income differences per capita, which impacts the development of food behavior in countries (BELIK, 2003). This has a major impact on the composition of production baskets, including the variety of products that countries choose or can produce and consume, affecting the levels of security and sustainability of the food system (CAMPI et al., 2021).

    In this context, food security is the core for the decision-makers of public policies when it comes to new forms of thinking, acting, and watching over such levels nationally and internationally (MABE et al., 2021). This is largely due to population growth, which is estimated to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 (UN, 2022). Coupled with this, in the world the number of undernourished people has increased from 804 million in 2016 to nearly 821 million in 2017, bringing to the fore concerns about food insecurity for at least one in nine people (FAO, 2019; MABE et al., 2021).

    These factors aggravate due to food being growingly homogenous in its composition, based on a group of global raw materials (CAMPI et al., 2021). In this sense, BENTHAM et al. (2020) approach the existence of four groups of product combinations that explain 90% of the food variety offered. Other authors also explain that the awareness of SDGs especially when it concerns SDG 2, tackling more sustainable production, may be influenced by some specific features, such as the school level, age, income, agricultural experience, family size, and property size (MABE et al., 2021).

    Some approaches advocate that, to reach food security, the rural-urban links must be strengthened through the population awareness of SDGs (MABE et al., 2021). Additionally, by capturing environmental capabilities and endowments for food production, adequacy is expected to have a positive correlation with food security. Instead, the correlation with the sustainability of food systems depends on the outcome of the trade-off that may arise when increasing food production and improving sustainability (CAMPI et al., 2021). Therefore, the SDG’s broad scope requires holistic approaches, integrating food sustainability evaluations.

    Based on this context, this study identified the most prominent topics in research related to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 Agenda and food production. To do so, this research performed a literature analysis in the period of 2001 to 2021. Such a timespan covers the development of the MDG (2001-2015) with the initial goals and, hence, the SDG 2030 Agenda (from 2015 on). The importance of understanding the scenario surrounding the SDGs, especially analyzing academic publications, is due to the important role that universities play, especially as boosters for achieving the goals, through human training, knowledge production, and innovation (SERAFIM & LEITE, 2021). Such authors also reinforce that universities worldwide have a role to establish an interface with public policies and the contributions of scientific evidence for societal development.

    Based on these assumptions, and with the goal of meeting the proposed objective, this paper is divided into three sections, besides the introduction. The first section covers the methodological procedures taken in the study, followed by the results, and discussions, which, at first, presents the literature indexes regarding the topic, followed by a second part that tackles the main themes studied throughout the analyzed period. At last, the final considerations are presented as closure.

    METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURES

    This work applies the technique of bibliometric research and analysis. This type of analysis enables mapping and generating different indicators of information, scientific, technological, and productivity processing (GUEDES & BORSCHIVER, 2005).

    The bibliographic survey was performed from the analysis of secondary sources in the Scopus platform. The database integrates all relevant sources for basic and applied research through patents, web sources of scientific content, open-access journals, congresses, and conferences, and is updated daily to include Articles in Press from more than 3,000 journals (ELSEVIER, 2010). In this context, the selected database gathers a significant number of specialized journals, which enables the inclusion of relevant papers into the sample.

    In the search mechanisms of the selected database, the descriptors with the following characteristics were inserted into the search fields “abstract”, “title”, and “keywords”: “sustainable development goals”, or “SDGs” or “Millenium Development Goals” or “public policy” or “government incentives” and “food production”. These keywords were selected due to the fact they are the most recurring in FAO’s report titles on SDG (FAO, 2021). The selection period corroborated the years 2001 to 2021 in the following concentration fields - Social Sciences, Multidisciplinary, and Economy. Based on this group of procedures, we obtained a total of 243 documents as detailed in figure 1.

    Figure 1 -
    Selection procedures of the documents from the Search Platform Scopus. Source: Elaborated by the authors based on the sample, 2024.

    Initially, the research results were submitted to the Software Bibliometrix R-TOOL. Bibliometrics R-Tool is an R package that facilitates the most complete bibliometric analysis due to the employment of specific tools for bibliometric and scientometric quantitative research. In this sense, R is one of the most powerful and flexible statistical software environments, providing an open code route for usage (RODRÍGUEZ-SOLER et al., 2020). Therefore, R is an integrated group of software groups for data and manipulation, and graph exhibition (ZUPIC & ČATER, 2015; ARIA & CUCCURULLO, 2017). Figure 2 demonstrates how the software gives support to the scientific method workflow;

    Figure 2 -
    Workflow and scientific mapping performed on Bibliometrix R Tool. Source: Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017, p.11.

    Through Bibliometrix, it is possible to carry out broad scientific mapping analysis. Through it, we perform data processing, authorship, citation, and co-citation coupling (ARIA & CUCCURULLO, 2017; RODRÍGUEZ-SOLER et al., 2020). In this manner, these techniques enable the understanding of the most outstanding topics in research related to the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030. In this context, the 243 final documents arising from the selection (Figure 1) were exported to the Software.

    From this, years of publication of the documents, country of origin, and keyword cloud were analyzed. For a quantitative analysis of the data, the Sankey diagram was used. These techniques seek to analyze the content flow of the samples, in which the rectangle size indicates the frequency of the selected variables (RADANLIEV et al., 2020). Aiming to deepen the understanding of the group of topics that corroborate the relationship between the Sustainable Development Goals and food production, a multi-correspondence factorial analysis was also performed, configured with an automatic grouping and a maximum number of 20 terms.

    Based on such a methodological setting, it is possible to comprehend the most prominent topics in research related to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 Agenda and food production.

    RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

    Bibliometric analysis

    The figure 3 below draws the annual distribution of the 243 sample documents.

    Figure 3 -
    Annual distribution of the 243 documents composing the sample. Source: Bibliometrix R-Tool, 2024.

    When it comes to annual production. the year 2001 did not present any document published based on the used descriptors (Figure 1). From the year 2017, there was significant growth in the publications on this matter (11 publications). The year 2020 was the most prominent in the number of published documents during the period under analysis (54). The table below presents the largest concentration in the number of documents by country, affiliation, and journals.

    As for countries, the United States presented the largest number of published documents totaling 126. In regards to the affiliation of origin, the universities located in the Netherlands (Wageningen University) and Canada (University of Guelph) are the ones presenting together the largest number of published documents (24) (Table 1). In this sense, the journal covering the largest number of published papers is Sustainability (22). It is worth highlighting that all these journals are included in the Journal Citation Report (JCR) and Scimago. The topics, even though pulverized in different fields of research and researchers from different countries, are concentrated in Dutch research centers.

    Thumbnail
    Table 1
    Number of published documents by Country, affiliation, and journals on Scopus database.

    Associated with these assumptions, figure 4 draws the keywords concentration found in the selected papers.

    Figure 4 -
    Cloud of keywords with the highest frequency of citations in Scopus. Source: Elaborated by the authors, based on the sample. 2024.

    Among the keywords from the Scopus paper sample, the most recurring are food security (38), followed by food supply (32), sustainability (31), and climate change (31). This setting (Figure 4) is associated, in particular, with SDGs 2 and 12, which are presented as the goals of “ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture”, as well as obtaining “sustainable consumption and production patterns” (FAO, 2021). These goals contribute directly to the generation of national/local guidelines, which aim to develop public policies to address the complexity of the problems related to these issues (LIMA, 2019).

    This configuration evidenced in the cloud of keywords also touches on aspects related to the governance approach, as well as public policy to encourage sustainable production. The intersection of those keywords enables understanding the need for decentralized public policies seeking to perform effective enhancements in the life quality of the planet’s peoples and biomes, taking into account their local specificities (SERAFIM & LEITE, 2021). The governance approaches also fall on SDG 12, which tackles the need for minimizing food waste (a transversal worry between societal production and supply), emphasizing the role countries have to identify the priority products, and the subsequent stages of high loss to applying a directed intervention.

    Food waste is another present keyword (Figure 4) associated, especially, with the role played by consumers. Thus, some discussions found in the literature demonstrate that aged people, as well as who separate domestic trash, present less food waste than other individuals (SECONDI et al., 2015). In this view, the population residing in the countryside tends to present less waste than the urban one (SECONDI et al., 2015).

    On the other hand, the food system has various gaps on which the impacts of climate change growingly determine the conflicts for land use (ERICKSEN, 2008; LAWLER et al., 2014). Agriculture industrialization and globalization, the change in consumption patterns to an animal protein-based diet, the emergence of modern good styles involving highly processed, and the paradoxical lack of food security amidst food abundance (BRUNORI et al., 2016; GIOVANNUCCI & PONTE, 2005; REISCH et al., 2013; SECONDI et al., 2015), are the main direct results of the actual practices of food production, distribution, and consumption.

    From this point of view, the cloud of words (Figure 4) refers to the complexity of the current systems of finding more equitable methods for everyone, respecting the planet’s limits. The configuration found reinforces the need for integration of the agriculture, health, and environmental policies as a whole (BRUNORI et al., 2016; FRISON & CLÉMENT, 2020; GALLI et al., 2020). Based on these results, figure 5 was created to systematize, through the Sankey diagram, the topics worked by country and year of publication.

    Figure 5 -
    Sankey diagram of the main keywords by year and country of origin found in the literature. Source: Elaborated by the authors through biblioshiny based on the bibliometrix package, 2024.

    Figure 5 shows that sustainable development and food production are the keywords with the highest concentration in the sample studied, being found in all selected years, as well as in the countries of origin. Based on the context of the most recurring keywords, it is assumed that the documents serve as the foundation for the research performed, as well as they are central when it comes to the works carried out about SDGs in the analyzed years. However, sustainable development is a subject that came into the spotlight only in recent years, finding the highest number of publications in the years 2015 (26) and 2016 (21). The United States is the country with the highest number of published studies in the sample, concentrating 90 documents (30%) on food production, and 76 papers (25%) on sustainable development.

    Overall, the countries have pulverized topics, especially in subjects involving agriculture and food production. Brazil, in turn, presents a work concentration on the theme of climate change (27 documents). Similarly, public policies have 16 documents. These two blocks of keywords corroborate 47,25% of the total published works in Brazil (91 documents).

    With the purpose of deepening the understanding of the group of topics that corroborate the relation of the Sustainable Development Goals and food production, a factorial analysis was applied as a statistical method to identify the keywords groups forming it. Such an analysis was used aiming to find the latent factors that result in the similarity in data records. It is also a statistical method to identify a lower number of variables within a wider number of observed variables (RADANLIEV et al., 2020).

    The factorial analysis enables three groups of factors. The first one has two keywords related to Africa and agricultural production (Figure 6). It is understood that this topic, in the past years, took the spotlight and countless speculations regarding the productive potential the African Continent has. On the other hand, the concentration of such a Cluster on two keywords refers to the specificity of works concerning food production.

    Figure 6 -
    Factorial analysis - conceptual framework map of the sample on SDGs and food production between 2001 and 2021. Source: Elaborated by the authors through biblioshiny, based on the bibliometrix package, 2024.

    The second factorial cluster (red) introduces a group of eight keywords referring to studies focusing on food security, climate change, and sustainable development. Among other aspects, these keywords refer to the consumers’ preferences and how they affect the productive dynamics before climate change. This is because, in recent years, the role consumers play has become more important, especially when it comes to alternative agri-food systems (FRISON & CLÉMENT, 2020).

    The thirst cluster (blue) has a group of factors (keywords) related to land use, agriculture, public policies, and the food industry. These settings are interlinked because food production is linked to the patterns of land use. Currently, these patterns create negative externalities, mainly due to the exaggerated use of resources (ERICKSEN, 2008). Nevertheless, the patterns of land use may be affected by political intervention, but they must be invasive to significantly modify the development tendencies. An example of such interventions corroborates the forestal incentive policies, which tend to provide enhancement in species conservation (LAWLER et al., 2014). In Brazil, there are conflicts of interest in agrochemical regulation, because the increase in its use boosted Brazilian competitiveness and, in turn, damages to health and the environment have already been perceived. This scenario aggravates when observing that new agricultural fields, such as Matopiba, are linked to an expansion market, in which the use of agrochemicals tends to be intensive (HUPFFER et al., 2020). On the other hand, it is also emphasized that “damage to health or the environment is less than other studies say, that it is possible to reconcile the intensive use of agrochemicals with sustainability and that state protection of the production and use of agrochemicals is essential” (MORAES, 2019.)

    Hence, based on the general context of the most prominent themes in research related to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 Agenda and food production between 2001 and 2021, the following section aims to analyze such developments by time period.

    Analysis of the main topics found in the time period from 2001 to 2021

    Table 2 allows us to analyze the main themes addressed among the 243 documents that were published in the period 2002 - 2021 around the Sustainable Development Goals over the years

    Thumbnail
    Table 2
    Analysis of the main topics approached over time (2002 - 2021).

    The analysis introduced in table 2 allows us to visualize similar topics that were discussed over the analyzed period (2002 to 2021), such as issues related to public policies (DUVERNOY, 2018), land use (NNAJI et al., 2021), and food security (CASSANO-PICHE at al., 2009).

    It is worth highlighting that, from the year 2017, topics related to food loss and waste gain prominence (PHILIPPIDIS et al., 2019). Concerning this theme, GARCIA-GARCIA et al. (2017) state that food waste is one of the most challenging issues humanities faces worldwide. PARFITT et al. (2010) define food loss as those occurring in the production, handling, and processing stages in the food supply chain. While food waste occurs during the final stages of the food chain and is related to retail and consumer behavior (PARFITT et al., 2010). FAO’s report on the indicator of SDG 12 emphasizes the need for reducing food waste and loss as a way to improve the food security situation of vulnerable groups and to mitigate the environmental footprint of food production activities (FAO, 2021).

    During the same time (2017-2018), discussions regarding the circular economy as an alternative for environmental problems that affect human health and social development began to appear (ZHIJUN & NAILING, 2007). According to YAKOVLEVA et al. (2017), the promotion of a circular economy can aid in reaching many SDGs, such as ending world hunger, reaching food security and sustainable agriculture, reducing food waste, and others. That would be reached through systemic thinking inside production and consumption cycles, improving the links between industrial sectors, reducing waste, and enhancing resource efficiency (YAKOVLEVA et al., 2021).

    Recently, these discussions were broadened from the insertion of the concept of circular bioeconomy (MAINA et al., 2017). It is an emerging concept, which represents the renewable segment of the circular economy, necessary to build a carbon-neutral future, aligned with the climate goals of the Paris Agreement (HOEHN et al., 2021).

    In the most recent period, mostly covering the papers published from the year 2021 on, the discussion agenda inserts the aspects related to COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts, especially influenced by the scenario experienced worldwide. Among the studies, SARKAR et al. (2021) analyzes, in a work carried out in China, food security in three different aspects (effective food use, food availability, and access to food) during the situation of COVID-19 pandemic.

    Also looking at the impacts of the pandemic, INGUTIA (2021) demonstrated the impacts of COVID-19 and climate change on smallholder farmers through the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and ways to keep smallholder farmers on the 2030 agenda. According to this author, COVID-19 exacerbates the underlying impacts of climate change that compromise food and water security. Widespread famines caused by the effects of COVID-19 have likely caused more deaths than the virus. Improving water availability and food production is crucial to ending hunger and poverty. This requires strengthening the adaptive and mitigating capacity of smallholder farmers, one alternative being through cooperation (INGUTIA, 2021).

    At the same time, some less discussed topics gained relevance, which also arise from Covid-19 pandemic, such as digital agriculture and technologies, which then began to be prominent. For BAHN et al. (2021), digital technologies offer a solution with the potential to improve the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of agrifood systems worldwide.

    At the same time, discussions on urban agriculture come to light (NAGIB & NAKAMURE, 2020). They tackle two different yet complementary practices - periurban agriculture, historically relevant for the provision of food to the local population and income generation for small farmers; and, intra-urban agriculture, represented by community gardens, resulting from activist initiatives (including community engagement). NAGIB & NAKAMURA (2020) emphasize that both peri and intraurban practices establish new food paradigms, among which are its educational and commercial role; the promulgation of new public policies; solidarity economy networks and markets; and the dissemination of the theory and practice of agroecological food (NAGIB & NAKAMURA, 2020).

    It is worth highlighting that gender and women empowerment issues were also present in discussions. One of the papers verifies gender inclusion and intersectionality in knowledge production in sustainability research (KHALIKOVA et al., 2021). Hence, a prominent level of gender inclusion among specialists in the field was verified, but the bibliometric analysis shows that gender issues are still at the margin of the studies on industrial ecology. In contrast to industrial ecology, these authors demonstrated growing attention to gender in other sustainability research fields (climate change, corporate social responsibility, food production, resource management, energy policy, behavior and environmental education). However, even then, gender tends to be equated to “women” in traditional gender roles, ignoring the role of intersectionality - gender intersection with income, age, and other demographic characteristics.

    Specifically related to food production, it was noted that such a topic has been at the center of discussion in all time periods, introduced in different manners. In the first place, it is necessary to stress issues regarding food and nourishment security. For RABBI et al. (2021), it is a concept strongly linked to food sustainability and environmental protection. Besides, for these authors, food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, economic, and social access to enough, safe, and nutritive food. In turn, insecurity covers issues of quantity and quality, under-consumption, and overconsumption (RABBI et al., 2021). These authors also point out that food production and consumption are the main components to achieve food security. Therefore, to achieve the goals of sustainable development, there needs to be a positive correlation between production, sustainable consumption, and food security (RABBI et al., 2021)

    In 2021, another topic introduced when it comes to food is noted - nutrition-sensitive agriculture (GEYIK et al., 2020). Still in the debate related to food production, issues related to local food systems and digital tools gain more emphasis, mainly influenced by the Pandemic of COVID-19. In this sense, FEI et al. (2020), point out that digital tools and innovative models can provide valuable solutions to face the crisis caused by the pandemic. These issues, grounded especially in the goals proposed by SDGs 2 and 12, make explicit that many changes in consumption and production patterns can help promote the decoupling of economic growth and human well-being from resource use and environmental impacts. They can also trigger the transformations envisaged by global commitments to biodiversity, climate, and sustainable development in general (FAO, 2021).

    To systematize the most relevant evidence from this study, table 3 was developed, in which it is stratified according to thematic criteria, defined based on the number of occurrences. The summary of the main findings of the study, as presented in table 3, facilitates the identification of aspects and actors related to criteria that suggest trends or evidence of progress regarding the achievement of the SDGs. In this regard, it is noteworthy that the sampled research demonstrates a recurrence of studies in Brazil, as well as publications by Brazilian researchers, totaling 91 works, representing 47.25% of this sample.

    Thumbnail
    Table 3
    Classification of thematic criteria and main approaches.

    Another aspect to consider is the origin and channels for disseminating knowledge, which are predominantly concentrated in public institutions and/or agencies, such as public universities, EMBRAPA, and EMATER in Brazil. This observation underscores the importance and necessity of public policies that remain consistent and foster both basic and applied research in the medium and long term. Furthermore, the strengthening of Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Services (ATER) is crucial for the proper dissemination of new knowledge and technologies, especially in small-scale production units, which, in significant numbers, lack the financial capacity to hire specialized professionals.

    Regarding trends and new technologies, the study revealed that digitalization in agriculture, accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, is rapidly becoming widespread. Associated with digitalization, Artificial Intelligence is gaining ground, with applications in agriculture such as early detection of pest and disease attacks, for example. In Brazil, EMBRAPA plays a crucial role in the development of knowledge and applications of Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture.

    Although controversial, the term ‘sustainability’ normally encompasses a critical and interdisciplinary perspective, highlighting issues related to cultural diversity, solidarity with the planet (and its biodiversity), ethical values and equity, equal rights, justice and autonomy, but also , refers to the search for economic and social development capable of addressing the needs of the present without compromising the possibilities of future generations (SILVA JUNIOR et al., 2015; WCED, 1987). The implementation of sustainability can include encouraging the adoption of sustainable practices, not only through cash payments, but also through non-monetary means, such as tax exemptions, granting of differentiated credits and technical assistance programs (CARNEIRO & DE SOUSA, 2020).

    Despite the criteria highlighted in table 3, it is clear that academic discussions still need to make efforts to point out conflicts and possible conciliatory solutions between productive agents, public and private defenders of the environment and society as a whole. Although alternatives have been implemented to encourage the productive sector to take care of the environment (especially in the context of payment for environmental services), the productivism paradigm still delegates concern with sustainability to governments in particular.

    CONCLUSION

    The objective of this research was to understand the most prominent themes in research related to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 Agenda and food production in the period covering 2001 to 2021. Using the combination of keywords: “sustainable development goals” or “SDGs” or “Millennium Development Goals” or “public policy” or “government incentives” and “food production” 243 documents published in Scopus were selected. The year 2001 did not show any published documents based on the configuration used. With the use of the R-Tool Bibliometrix Software, it was possible to analyze in greater depth all 243 documents generated in the search platform.

    From this, it can be observed through the most frequent keywords that there is an annually growingly convergence of forces in this theme; There are two main sides to this scenario: the search for equitable and resilient food systems, and the forms of land use. In the same way, we observe the growth over the years of themes that are being coupled around the SDGs. The year 2021, especially boosted by the pandemic of COVID-19, presented the highest concentration of themes, which are transversal to food security, land use, and economic crises. In this same scenario, new themes were inserted, such as nutrition-sensitive agriculture, and the use of technologies.

    It is possible to understand that the theme of the SDGs permeates all areas of research, but is still concentrated in large and important research centers. The bibliometric review employed also allowed us to understand that public policies and global and local governance are essential to effectively build the 2030 Agenda, especially to manage the conflicts of interest that emerge in different territories. In the same scenario, it is possible to see a broad research agenda, especially regarding sustainable food production and supply after the pandemic of COVID-19. In Brazil, the agenda is even more complex, given the environmental and economic crises that devastate the most vulnerable population in the country.

    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    The present research was carried out with the support of the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) Funding Code 001.

    REFERENCES

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      CR-2023-0134.R2

    DECLARATION OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST

    • DECLARATION OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST
      The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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    Publication Dates

    • Publication in this collection
      11 Nov 2024
    • Date of issue
      2025

    History

    • Received
      07 Mar 2023
    • Accepted
      05 Aug 2024
    • Reviewed
      03 Oct 2024
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