Next Article in Journal
Fostering a Wildlife-Friendly Program for Sustainable Coffee Farming: The Case of Small-Holder Farmers in Indonesia
Previous Article in Journal
Digital Transformation of Land Services in Indonesia: A Readiness Assessment
 
 
Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
Journals
Land
Volume 10
Issue 2
10.3390/land10020119
land-logo
Submit to this Journal Review for this Journal Propose a Special Issue
► Article Menu

Article Menu

share Share announcement Help format_quote Cite question_answer Discuss in SciProfiles thumb_up
...
Endorse textsms
...
Comment
first_page
settings
Order Article Reprints
Font Type:
Arial Georgia Verdana
Font Size:
Aa Aa Aa
Line Spacing:
Column Width:
Background:
Review

Global Trends on Food Security Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

by
Hualin Xie
1,
Yuyang Wen
1,
Yongrok Choi
2,* and
Xinmin Zhang
1
1
Institute of Ecological Civilization, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang 330013, China
2
Department of International Trade, Inha University, 100 Inha-ro, Nam-gu, Incheon 402-751, Korea
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Land 2021, 10(2), 119; https://doi.org/10.3390/land10020119
Submission received: 20 December 2020 / Revised: 18 January 2021 / Accepted: 25 January 2021 / Published: 27 January 2021
Browse Figures
Versions Notes

Abstract

:
The issue of food security has been widely studied by the international community. To reveal the research situation as it pertains to food security objectively, this paper comprehensively utilizes bibliometrics techniques (i.e., Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace) to explore the research status and development trends in the area of food security. The results show that: (1) food security research has shown an increasing trend during the past 30 years. The 2013–2019 period was shown to be an active period with a high yield of articles, which were published mainly in the developed regions of Europe and America. Particularly, the number of articles published in the United States was far ahead of other countries in the world. (2) Food security research involved agriculture, environmental science and ecology, food science and technology, and business economics. The research topic is an interdisciplinary subject with a good momentum of development and a large space remaining for research. (3) Climate change, poverty, gender, nutrition, and diet structure have been the focuses of food security research in recent years. Food security in China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa has attracted wide attention. (4) Food security research is becoming more and more mature. The research scope extended from food security to food security and water and land resource security. Research topics range from decentralized to systematic. (5) Food security research is likely to gain much attention in the future based on three pillars: food supply, food access, and food use. Sustainability and diversity of food supply, along with dietary restructuring and food conservation initiatives, are expected to be new trends in future research on land management.

1. Introduction

Food security is directly related to international stability and human well-being, so the issue of food security has been widely studied by the international community. Although global food security has improved in recent years, many countries still suffer from serious food security problems [1]. Especially since the outbreak of COVID-19, food production has been greatly impacted, causing humanity to realize the importance of ensuring food security once again [2]. As productivity and human living standards improve continuously, people’s understanding of the concept and connotations of food security has expanded and deepened, so the connotations of food security are characterized by the contemporary era [3]. In 1974, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defined food security as “ensuring that adequate food for survival and health is available to all at all times”. The concept was redefined in 1983 to be “anyone who can afford at any time to buy the basic foods they need”. The concept of food security was further refined in 2001 in the belief that food security can be achieved by providing people with economic and material access to food to meet their needs and preferences, for which resources should be socially available. According to the FAO’s definition of food security, the first definition focuses on national and global food supply, whereas the second focuses on household and individual access to food. Policy concerns about food security are increasingly considering income, expenditure, market, and price factors [4]. The third refinement of the concept further expands the connotation and extension of food security, which considers food hygiene and health standards, as well as nutritional balance and introduces human rights and sociocultural factors [5]. Thus, food security is not simply a matter of sufficient food supply, but is also related to regional accessibility, the purchasing power of residents, food quality, political and socio-economic stability, and other factors. Scholars have carried out detailed researches and in-depth explanations of the concept of food security put forward by the FAO [6,7,8]. Compared with the concept of food security defined by previous studies, this paper adopts the FAO’s latest definition of food security: sustainable food security includes four dimensions—food supply, access, and utilization, as well as stability [9]. The four dimensions of food security are closely related and have inherent hierarchical characteristics. The first three consider the national grain supply, the ability of a family to obtain the grain, and the use an individual makes of the grain, whereas the final dimension considers the stability of the first three [10,11].
Many studies have been made on food security in recent decades, including not only the definition of the concept of food security but also its evaluation [12,13] and the analysis of factors affecting it [14,15]. Corresponding countermeasures and suggestions for food security have been proposed [16,17,18]. The evaluation index system of food security is usually constructed from different dimensions. For example, five dimensions comprise the appraisal system, regarding the safety of the quantity, quality, ecological environment, economy, and resources [19]. Coates established a food security evaluation system from the perspectives of food adequacy, nutrition adequacy, cultural acceptability, and food stability [20]. Ma Jiujie et al. established a food security early warning system from the perspectives of food and dietary energy balance, food production, food demand, and food reserves [12]. Zhang Yuanhong and others built an indicator system based on supply, distribution, consumption, security results, utilization efficiency, stability, sustainability, and regulatory power [21]. These studies are of great significance to scientifically and reasonably judge the development trend of food security.
In scientific research, the discovery of a scientific problem is often followed by an in-depth study of the relevant driving force. Food security is a comprehensive issue, and the relevant factors are inevitably diverse. Previous studies have suggested that factors affecting food security include climate change, population growth, wars and conflicts, urbanization, and food waste, among others. However, scholars hold different opinions on the effect of different factors on food security. For example, regarding the impact of climate change on food security, some scholars believe that climate change is reducing the supply function of natural ecosystems to human beings, resulting in reduced food production [22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30]. In addition, climate change can contribute to an increase in food production, and higher concentrations of carbon dioxide as a result of the greenhouse effect are beneficial to plant photosynthesis, which is beneficial to crop yields [31,32]. Other scholars have not made a direct assessment of the magnitude of the impact of climate change on food security, but have argued that the importance of climate change on the various dimensions and overall impacts of food security will vary by region over time, and, most importantly, these impacts will depend on the overall socioeconomic performance of a country under the impact of climate change [33]. Views also differ on the effects of urbanization on food security. Some studies have suggested that urbanization threatens food security in two ways—by reducing production and by changing the structure of food consumption [34,35]. In terms of food production, the advance of urbanization will cause the transfer of surplus rural labor, which will decrease the labor resources that can be invested into food production, and the increase in the urban population will increase the demand for urban space. The expansion of urban areas will also cause the continued disappearance of adjacent urban areas of arable land, reducing food production and land resource input. In terms of food consumption, as the average income of cities is higher, when the labor force moves from the countryside to the cities, the food consumption structure will usually be upgraded, increasing the indirect consumption of food; thus, urbanization boosts total grain consumption. However, other studies have found that economic and social progress brought about by urbanization can also lead to more modern agricultural production technologies, in which farmers can use machinery to replace lost labor and chemical fertilizers to promote crop growth [36]. There is also considerable controversy over the development of biofuels and biotechnology [37,38,39].
Finding a problem and recognizing its drivers are often closely linked with the process of finding a solution. In the field of food security, there are also studies on how to ensure food security, which propose corresponding countermeasures and recommendations. The mainstream recommendations can be divided into three categories. The first is that poverty is the root cause of the food security problem [16], and we should start by solving poverty. Second, agricultural technology should be improved, which would result in increased grain output and improved grain quality. Third, grain consumption habits should be changed to adapt to the severe food security environment. Specific proposals include strengthening agricultural stimulus policies, as well as poverty reduction and social security schemes [40]; providing agricultural credit and increasing off-farm employment [41]; providing a variety of fertilizers, crop varieties, and irrigation methods [42,43,44]; developing appropriate agricultural scale operations [45]; optimizing the composition of residents’ diets, reducing food waste; adjusting the composition of grain consumption [46,47]; and increasing the convenience of the grain trade [48].
Although many studies have been made on food security in the past, the lack of systematic articles about the research results means that the temporal and content evolution of this research field is not well understood. Although there are some comprehensive articles on food security, their reviews of food security involved only specific aspects [49], and the research methods were relatively simple [50], so most lack an interdisciplinary perspective. For scholars who want to understand the focal points and hotspots of food security research, review articles can improve their understanding of the knowledge framework of the research field more quickly. Combining the advantages of three bibliometric analysis tools—Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace 5.5—this paper uses keyword frequency statistics, keyword co-occurrence, document clustering, and topical evolutionary methods to draw a research map of food security from the Web of Science (WoS) database. To understand the current research situation in the field of food security intuitively through the atlas, to analyze the influential articles and main research topics in the field of food security, and to explore the knowledge structure in the field of food security, in order to provide guidance and reference for the researchers of food security, hotspots, and frontiers in the field of food security were found, and the research trends were analyzed and proposed.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Data Source

Web of Science is the largest comprehensive information resource in the world. In this paper, we used the Web of Science core set as the data source, selected the literature type as article, set the advanced retrieval type as Ti = (food security OR grain security) [51], and set the deadline as 31 December 2019. After the data reweighting, this method resulted in 2974 references to food security for 1990–2019.

2.2. Research Methodology

At present, there are more than ten kinds of literature atlas analysis software, and each has its advantages. Bibliometrix measures scientific literature based on the R language developed by Dr. Massimo Aria of Italy. It can import and process information from Scopus and WoS, analyze the index of scientific literature, and construct the data matrix; the co-citation, coupling, co-, and co-word analyses; and other aspects of research and visualization [52] from recent years in various fields of scientific research [53,54,55]. VOSviewer, developed by Nies Jan van Eck and Ludo Waltman, is widely used in all kinds of co-occurrence analysis software, especially in terms of keyword co-occurrence analysis [56,57,58,59,60,61]. CiteSpace, developed by Professor Chen Chaomei of Drexel University in the United States, is known for its powerful document co-citation analysis. CiteSpace is used by scholars to explore research hotspots, frontiers, and trends and is now widely used in more than 60 fields, including computer science, information science, food, and medicine [62,63,64,65]. To accurately and comprehensively analyze the development status and research hotspots in the field of food security and to develop visualizations thereof, this paper analyzes the research status and hotspot trends in the field of food security using the software packages CiteSpace 5.5, VOSviewer, and Bibliometrix. The detailed steps for this research are shown in Figure 1.

3. Bibliometric Analysis

3.1. Descriptive Analysis

3.1.1. Main Information

The analysis of the evolution of things can be a yearly tracking of the time series and can be divided into different stages of research. The chronological distribution of the literature quantity can reflect the trend of the research and describe the characteristics of the trend in different stages of development [66]. From 1990 to 2019, the number of research papers published in the field of food security, although slightly fluctuating, maintained an overall trend of growth, as seen in Figure 2, depicting the annual publication numbers of the food security articles. This trend can be divided into three research stages: 1990–2006, 2007–2012, and 2013–2019. The period from 1990 to 2006 was one of low output exploration. Before 2006, the increase in the number of articles published was slow, and the annual average number of articles published varied little annually. Research on food security was in the embryonic stage, which shows that the importance of the field of food security had not attracted the attention of most scholars. In 2007–2012, an average number of 84 papers was published, entering the stage of rapid development. The period from 2013 to 2019 was an active period of high yield, with a sharp increase in the amount of literature, with an average annual publication volume of 292.9 articles, which continued to increase. This phenomenon was largely affected by the food crisis in 2008–2012, resulting in an increase in the relevant research [67,68], which also shows that the international academic community is paying more attention to the issue of food security. The average number of citations was the highest in 2004, at 100.1, which shows that the related research in this period has a great influence. The 2004 paper Soil Carbon Sequestration Impacts on Global Climate Change and Food Security, published in Science by Lal R, has been cited as many as 3412 times, making a significant contribution to the average citations of the literature of the period. In addition to increasing food security, the paper suggests that carbon sequestration could offset between 0.4 and 120 million tons of carbon emitted by fossil fuels each year. The results of this study have been widely recognized in various academic fields [69].

3.1.2. Authors

The authors’ information contained in the collected data allows for the identification of lead authors, as well as their institutions and countries in the field of food security. The h-index refers to the number of published papers that have been cited at least h times [70]. The h-index, total citations, number of publications, and year of first publication in the area of food security for the top 10 influential authors who make the largest contribution to the WoS database are shown in Table 1. Figure 3 shows their distribution over time. The volume of the sphere is proportional to the annual number of papers (NP) and the color depth of the sphere is proportional to the annual total article citations (TC) (TC/Y). According to the volume statistics, Sieber S (14 articles) had the largest number of articles, and the researchers studied a wide range of issues in dealing with food security issues, mainly the performance of farmers in Tanzania. Replacing food crops with biofuel-producing crops could have a negative impact on local food security and was shown to increase hunger [71,72,73]. In terms of the h-index, Nord M has the largest influence, with an index value of up to 10, followed by Herrero M and Lal R, who each have an index value of 9. Nord M is mainly devoted to the research of the food security evaluation system, which primarily takes the form of an interview survey aiming to study the influence of food security on life based on the types and psychological states of the respondents. In terms of total citations, Lal R has the most. Figure 3 shows that high-yield authors in the database published a large number of articles between 2013 and 2019, which coincides with the period of high-yield activity. This shows that food security research has gained high attention.
According to the statistical analysis of the relevant countries, the three countries with the highest number of papers on food security in the WoS database are the United States (1952), Canada (486), and the United Kingdom (464). The United States is far ahead of other countries in terms of the number of documents published, which partly reflects the fact that the United States is more active in the field of food security than other countries. Six of the top 10 countries are developed, whereas the four developing countries are the world’s two most populous (China and India) and two are from sub-Saharan Africa (South Africa and Kenya). According to the average citation quantity of the articles, Italy has the highest average citation quantity, and the average citation quantity of articles in developed countries is generally higher. China and India are the two most populous countries in the world, and their populations are still growing. The international community has been paying close attention to the food security of these two countries [74,75]. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where more than one-third of the population suffers from widespread hunger, and smallholder farmers, who produce more than 80% of Africa’s food, face caloric and micronutrient deficiencies [76]. South Africa and Kenya are representative of the region, where 61% of households suffer from mild, moderate, or severe food insecurity [77]. Studies from this region study focused primarily on smallholder farmers. The strategies for improving food security were studied from the perspectives of pests, agricultural diversification, food improvement, investment in education, and food storage [14,18,78,79,80]. Country-by-country articles are included in Table 2 below, and country postings are distributed in Figure 4 below. Darker colors indicate higher number of articles published. Most of the articles are published in European and American countries, whereas China, India, and Japan in Asia have more articles, and some countries in central Africa and central and western Asia have no relevant literature on food security. This result also shows the weakness of food security research in these countries. On the whole, the United Kingdom and the United States cooperate closely, and the level of cooperation between African countries and the developed countries needs to be improved. The different clusters formed also illustrate the differences in food security experienced by individual countries. Countries with similar natural, economic, and social conditions are conducting more exchanges and cooperation.
The statistical analysis of the articles related to food security revealed that food security involves a number of research directions, including agriculture, environmental sciences, and ecology; food science and technology; business economics, etc. It has a good momentum of development and a large space for research. Most of these areas are in agriculture, followed by environmental sciences and technology, and then food science and technology, as shown in Figure 5. The analysis of relevant articles on different research directions showed that the research on food security from the perspective of agriculture is mainly focused on how to improve agricultural production technology. Suggestions include improving new varieties to increase food production, increasing irrigation levels to make rational use of water resources, advocating for the importance of urban and smallholder agriculture, and encouraging the provision of agricultural credits [81,82,83,84,85]. Research in the environmental sciences and ecology focuses on the impact of climate change on food production; argues that climate change has potentially devastating impacts on biodiversity and food security; and argues for the importance of biological and genetic diversity, opportunities for income generation through the development of biofuels, and the expansion of agricultural production technologies that may lead to welfare gains that increase purchasing power and reduce vulnerability to food price shocks [86,87,88]. Furthermore, food science and technology mainly focus on food nutrition [89,90]. Food security from the perspective of the commercial economy mainly considers food policy and the food trade, as well as the fact that global trade improves national food security and suggests that food security should be improved through measures such as increasing non-farm employment, providing agricultural credits, and developing fisheries [85,91,92,93,94,95,96].

3.2. Visual Analysis

3.2.1. Cooperative Network Analysis

Analysis of National Cooperative Networks

Cooperation networks are mainly of three types: country-to-country, institution-to-institution, and scholar-to-scholar. For this paper, we used the co-authorship function in VOSviewer to obtain the cooperative network, shown in Figure 6, with a minimum of 30 posts and 50 citations. The size of the nodes in the graph represents the amount of text sent from the country, the lines indicate cooperation between countries, the colors represent different groups, and the distance between nodes represents the similarity of research topics. Our observations showed that the inter-country cooperation network on food security is divided into five clusters, with the following main countries: cluster #1, the United Kingdom and Australia; #2, the United States and Canada; #3, South Africa and Kenya; #4, Italy and France; and #5, Germany and Sweden. The compositions of clusters #3–5 are relatively simple, with African and European countries represented. Clusters #1 and #2 are more diverse, come from different continents, and cover a wider range of research topics.

Analysis of National Cooperative Networks

The authors’ cooperative network diagram is able to reflect the composition of the research team, the strength of the cooperation among the research teams can be judged by the distance between the groups and the connection density, and the size of the research team can be seen from the number of nodes in the groups. The co-authorship function in VOSviewer sets the minimum number of posts to four and the minimum number of citations to 10 in order to obtain the cooperative network (Figure 7). The images show that the authors of the study on food security have formed four large groups. Study Group #1, led by Palazzo A, studies the relationship between food security and land and water resources, as well as the impact of climate change on food security. This group considers that the main challenges to food security will come from increased demand plus regional differences in the ability to adapt to climate change [97,98,99,100,101]. Study Group #2, headed by Havlik P, focuses on the effects of carbon emissions-induced global warming on food security [102,103,104]. Study Group #3, headed by See L, focuses on the causes of food security problems on the African continent [18,105]. Study Group #4, headed by Herrero M, addresses food security issues and proposes ways to ensure food security through the provision of diversified foods and the empowerment of farmers [106,107,108]. From the point of view of these authors’ cooperative clusters, irrespective of theoretical analysis, driving force analysis, or game analysis, they are all interrelated and inseparable. However, we can also find that the theoretical analysis is still weak, especially from the perspective of sustainable development of food security theory less.

3.2.2. Co-Citation Analysis

Co-citation networks can discover influential articles in the field of food security, which are often enlightening and lay a theoretical foundation for the research field. CiteSpace visual analysis software has some advantages in the co-citation function and can analyze the literature that is active in the research field and has great reference value. In this paper, CiteSpace 5.5 was used, the reference node was selected, and a network graph (Figure 8) of food security literature citations was obtained, according to the default values. Each node represents an article, and its size is proportional to the frequency of citation. The colors of the nodes and wires indicate when the article was referenced. The co-citation network for food security revealed four main groups.
The most influential articles in food security research are available through the CiteSpace co-citation statistical function, and the most influential literature in the field of food security research was published around 2010, mostly in top international journals, according to observational studies. Godfrey HCJ (2010) identifies the need for a multifaceted and interconnected global strategy to ensure sustainable and equitable food security [109]. Barrett CB (2010) focuses on how to measure food safety [10]. Pinstrup-Andersen P (2009) discusses the concept of food security as it changes over time and suggests that temporal assessment is a useful way of measuring the well-being of families and individuals, in particular, by combining this measurement with the estimation of household food purchasing and distribution behavior [7]. From the co-citation of these most influential articles, the frequency of co-citation of the theoretical research articles is high, especially after the 2008 food crisis, which lays a foundation for later research.

3.2.3. Keyword Co-Occurrence Analysis

Keywords can provide core information about the content of the article, and two or more keywords appearing in the same paper at the same time are called a keyword co-occurrence [110]. A keyword co-occurrence analysis can identify research hotspots and monitor the transfer of research frontiers in the field of scientific knowledge [111,112]. In this study, we used the co-occurrence feature in VOSviewer, set to at least 15 author keywords, to obtain a keyword co-occurrence graph. In the keyword co-occurrence graph, a larger node indicates a higher frequency of keyword occurrence. The 20 most frequently used keywords are listed in Table 3. The analysis of keywords generally includes two analysis routes—the frequency of individual keywords, from which we can understand the research hotspot in this field, or the number of keyword co-occurrences, which relies on a combination of analyses to understand the main research topics. Table 3 shows that climate change is the most frequently used keyword in addition to food security, followed closely by food insecurity, nutrition, poverty, and others. The issue of food security in China, India, Ethiopia, and sub-Saharan Africa has drawn wide attention from the national community. There are differences in the causes of and approaches to food security issues due to local backgrounds in natural and socio-economic conditions. Given the co-occurrence of keywords in Figure 9, poverty is an important cause of food shortages in Ethiopia, and the main way to solve the problem of food security is to get rid of war chaos and develop the economy [51,81]. Differences in the status of men and women in sub-Saharan African countries result in the division of roles and the impact of adverse natural conditions on food security; the problem of food shortages can be further improved by changes in farmers’ concepts, the development of small-scale farmers, and the improvement of new crop varieties [94]. As the two most populous countries in the world, China and India are both developing countries, and the limitations of population and economic conditions are obvious [74]. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate reasonable food policies and perfect food sovereignty. At the same time, attention should also be paid to the threats posed by climate change and the excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers to agricultural production and sustainability.
As shown in Figure 10, burst keywords (frequently quoted keywords over a period) can indicate leading-edge topics. As seen from Figure 10, twenty-one burst keywords emerged in the field of food security research from 1990 to 2019. Nutrition and hunger are two of the keywords that emerged in the early days, and they appear and last approximately the same amount of time, suggesting that nutrition and hunger have drawn attention to food security in the academic world and that they represent two of its aspects. Over time, keywords such as conflict, aid, urban agriculture, overweight, and smallholder farmer emerged, reflecting the research focus at different times. Keywords such as food safety, food access, sustainable development, food waste and availability are among the most recent and are found in ongoing research, indicating that food safety, food access, and use sustainability and availability have been the focus of recent academic attention and maybe for a while, as scholars address the issue of food security at the point of entry. The emergence of a word from the original scattered specific research topics into food security, food availability, diversification, sustainability, effectiveness, and other systematic research indicates that studies have made great progress in terms of their breadth and depth. It shows that the research on food security is becoming mature in recent years.

3.3. Evolutionary Path of Research Topics and Identification of Research Frontiers

Thematic evolutionary analysis studies a theme’s content, intensity, and structure, showing that the theme changes with time, evolutionary relations, and tendency. Topical evolutionary analysis plays an important role in sorting out the development of the field, grasping the direction of the field and proposing its trends. The Sankey diagram, also known as the Sankey energy split diagram, is a type of flowchart (see Figure 11). In this paper, the evolution of food security research topics over time is visualized using the Sankey diagram, and the evolution of food security research topics over the whole research process is analyzed with the help of the thematic evolutionary diagram. Qualitatively speaking, the topical evolutionary path of the domain was identified based on the evolutionary trend (including the problem-solving, problem-finding, and development paths).
The ways to solve the problem mainly include the following:
  • ① Africa(A)→ food aid(B)→ urban agriculture(C)→ smallholder farmer(D)
  • ② hunger/nutrition(AB)→ food security/food insecurity(C)→ diet(D)
  • ③ hunger(A)→ food security(BC)→ sustainable development(D)
  • ④ food security(ABC)→ poverty(D)
In light of the problem-solving evolutionary path, the issue of food security in Africa has received early attention. To solve the problem, first through the provision of food aid and then through the development of urban agriculture, researchers turned to small farmers. The problems of hunger and nutrition have made people aware of the importance of food security. Studies have found that climate change and poverty are important causes, and sustainable development programs should be developed. Solving the problem of poverty and adjusting the dietary structure are conducive to solving the problem of food security. The development of aquaculture is also conducive to alleviating environmental food security problems.
The main problem-finding paths include the following:
  • ① drought (A)→ food security (BCD)
  • ② poverty/rice/nutrition (A)→ food security (BCD)
  • ③ health (AB)→ food security (C)→ food safety (D)
  • ④ China/Asia/southern Africa (A)→ food security (BCD)
  • ⑤ children (A)→ poverty (B)→ food security/food insecurity (CD)
Determining the path of the problem can help us understand its cause. As seen from the main evolutionary paths, the problems of drought, poverty, health, and nutrition have drawn attention to the issue of food security. The issue of food security in China, Asia, and southern Africa has drawn wide attention. Poverty limits children’s growth and raises concerns about food security.
The development spin-off paths mainly include the following:
  • ① hunger (A)→ food security (BC)→ food safety (D)
  • ② food security (A)→ food and nutrition security (BC)→ food insecurity (D)
  • ③ food security (AB)→ water security (C)→ food insecurity (D)
  • ④ agricultural policy (A)→ food security/sub-Saharan Africa (B)→ trade (C)→ food insecurity (D)
The path can be divided into two types: development and derivation. Development is a process of progress and change from the appearance of things; it is constant renewal and a continuous process of change. Derivation refers to the evolution of a new substance from the parent substance. Similarly, the evolution of food security research themes has resulted in developments in spinoffs, such as path 1, where the issue of hunger has given rise to concerns about food security, which has led to concerns about food safety, and the corresponding fields of study have gradually expanded. Because the connotations of food security are smaller than those of food safety, the essence of food security is food safety, and the focus of food safety is food [113]; thus, this evolutionary path belongs to the development path. In the same way, attention to food and nutrition issues is derived from food security, and the research area is expanding, which belongs to the development path. Paths 3 and 4 derive from the initial food security and agricultural policies, and the issues of water security and the food trade, respectively. They are derivative processes of the theme and thus belong to the evolutionary path of the derivative theme [16,114].
The width of the line in the evolutionary graph can reflect changes in the quantitative studies. It can be found that the scope of research topics is gradually narrowing, and there is no inevitable relationship between the maximum amount of research topics. The early food security research was mainly caused by nutrition and health problems in Africa, Brazil, and China, and China and Brazil received the most attention. By the 2000s, food security in African countries remained a serious problem, and research into poverty and food aid related to food security increased. In the past decade, food shortage, food trade and consumption, urban agriculture and small-scale farming have become the focus of most studies.
Keyword co-occurrence networks can intuitively describe the frequency and co-occurrence of keywords, burst words can express the time and duration of the emergence of keywords, and the evolutionary path can clearly depict the specific research context. The whole research process in the field of food security can be understood by means of a comprehensive observation of co-occurrence maps, emergent keyword maps, and topical evolutionary paths. The observations clearly show that the main theme of the study revolves around the exploration of the drivers of food security and the search for solutions to food security problems. Global food and nutrition issues have received wide attention, particularly in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia, where food security is a major concern, with studies showing that by 2018 there were more than 820 million undernourished people in the world—people who face chronic food shortages. Malnutrition and severe food insecurity are increasing in almost all regions of Africa and, although to a lesser extent, in Latin America and western Asia [115]. There are many reasons for food security, such as climate change, poverty, drought, gender, the food trade, and agricultural policy. Food aid, including short-term emergency relief and planned food aid to help address medium-term food shortages, is usually a major component of food security strategies in developing countries [94]. Studies have found that the WTO food trade regime has an impact on the trade policies of its members and on food-related rights; therefore, it may have an impact on food security. The changing trade environment undermines the traditional role of the world food aid system in promoting food security. Many developing countries, particularly the least-developed countries and net food importers, are likely to face greater food difficulties than before, at least in the short term [116]. Part of the study area is devoted to the issue of how to ensure food security and suggesting corresponding countermeasures and suggestions. Starting from the definition of food security, the mainstream view holds that the countermeasures and suggestions for food security should be based on three pillars—supply, access, and use. From the perspective of food supply, improvements should be made in agricultural production techniques to increase food production and quality and to facilitate food storage and trade flows, including providing diversified fertilizers and crop varieties, improving irrigation methods [42,43,44], developing appropriate agricultural scale operations [45], providing agricultural credits to promote agricultural production and increase grain production [41], supporting small-scale farmers to integrate organically with modern agriculture [117], paying attention to aquaculture [43], expanding grain storage and logistics facilities [118], and improving the international food security trade order [48,92]. In terms of access to food, poverty has been identified as the root cause of food insecurity, and access to food should be made more affordable by increasing people’s income [16]—including through enhanced agricultural incentives, poverty reduction, and social security programs [40,119]—and by increasing nonfarm employment [41,120]. From the perspective of food use, food consumption habits should be changed to adapt to the severe food security environment, including optimizing the composition of residents’ diets and adjusting the structure of grain consumption [46,47]. Government policy plays an important role in solving the problem of food security. The government, as the maker of public policy, can better solve the problem of food security by providing public products, and make relevant laws and regulations to restrict and regulate the important links of food supply, food access, and food use; therefore, it is important to find a solution to the problem of food shortage from the perspective of government policy. For instance, in China, the most populous country in the world, the government has formulated some relevant policies to address food security issues, such as setting a red line for protecting 1.8 billion mu of arable land, demarcating permanent basic farmland and developing high-standard farmland, and has thus solved problems of food shortages and made great contributions to poverty reduction [121,122].
The research focus on food security has been changing over time, and some emerging research hotspots and topics are not shown in the Figures. Our results suggest that we should deal with the problem of food security from the viewpoint of sustainable development and encourage people to save food. Topics closely related to food security include water resource security and nutrition security, which have attracted much academic attention, and research on the water–energy–land nexus is becoming increasingly popular.

4. Conclusions

In this study, the literature related to food security in the WoS database from 1990 to 2019 was analyzed using the advantages of different software. From the macroscopic understanding of the development of food security research, we noted the main research group and the country, and the correlation between the distribution of research topics. We aimed to understand the research focus and evolution path of food security from the microcosmic point of view, and analyze the main articles and the research results of the main authors. It is expected that this paper will provide relevant researchers with a comprehensive reference and help scholars to understand the latest content on food security and to conduct more in-depth research based on the existing studies and future research trends. We have drawn the following conclusions:
(1)
The number of papers published in the field of food security fluctuated slightly in the past 30 years, but the general trend continued to increase. A high-yield active period for papers on food security was from 2013 to 2019, with a sharp increase in the number of publications. The United States published the largest number of articles, far ahead of the rest of the world. China, India, and Japan were the largest contributors in Asia, whereas some countries in central Africa and in west and central Asia have not published articles on food security, indicating a weak research capacity in these countries.
(2)
From the perspective of cooperative networks, five main groups formed between countries and four main research groups formed between authors and authors. At present, the degree of cooperation and data sharing among countries is not high, the existing research base cannot be fully developed, leading to more repetitive work. Therefore, the national partnership urgently needs to be strengthened and improved. The most influential articles in the field of food security research were published around 2010, and most of the journals in which the articles were published were top international journals. The issue of food security in China, India, Ethiopia, and sub-Saharan Africa has drawn wide attention from the national community, and climate change, agriculture, nutrition, poverty, sustainability, gender, hunger, and dietary diversity are among the most discussed topics in food security. Nutrition and hunger are two of the earlier buzzwords, whereas food safety, food access, sustainable development, food waste, and availability have been the focus of attention in food security research in recent years. It is worth noting the amount of past research on food security based on the theory of sustainability is low, as well as the lack of food security evaluation research. Regional food security evaluation is not a one-time evaluation, but a dynamic evaluation process dependent upon changes in natural and social economic conditions. Monitoring and periodic assessments are therefore necessary to analyze the factors that impede food security at different times.
(3)
The study of food security has become increasingly mature and has made great progress in recent years, changing from specific research subjects to research on food security, food availability, diversification, sustainability, and effectiveness. From the perspective of research disciplines, food security research is gradually moving towards the intersection of environmental science, demography, sociology, and other disciplines. Therefore, with its intersection of research disciplines, food security research should be fully carried out in the field. Research on ecological, economic, and social levels will gradually improve the theoretical framework and norms of this field. The field of research should be deepened from the fundamental science to the level of technical science. In the future, research on food security should pay more attention to the sustainable development mode of interaction and coordination among the economy, environment, and society under the support of technological progress and policy management.

Author Contributions

H.X., Y.W., Y.C., and X.Z. conceptualized the research and performed the validation. H.X., Y.W., and X.Z. administered the project, developed the methodology, curated the data, conducted the formal analysis, produced the visualizations, and wrote and prepared the original draft manuscript. H.X., Y.W., Y.C. and X.Z. reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41971243 & 41930757), the Academic and Technical Leaders Funding Program for Major Disciplines in Jiangxi Province (No. 20172BCB22011), the National Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (No. 20202ACB203004), the Humanities and Social Science Project of Jiangxi Provincial Department of Education (No. GL19111), the Fok Ying-Tung Fund (No. 141084), and the 15th Student Research Project of Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics (No. 20200613134716362).

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Not applicable.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the reviewers and the editor whose suggestions greatly improved the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

References

  1. Food Security Information Network (FSIN). Global Report on Food Crisis; Food Security Information Network (FSIN): Rome, Italy, 2018; p. 202. [Google Scholar]
  2. Cheng, G.Q.; Zhu, M.D. The impact of the COVID-19 on food security: Trend, impact and countermeasures. China’s Rural Econ. 2020, 425, 16–23. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  3. Ma, E.P.; Cai, J.M.; Lin, J.; Guo, H.; Han, Y.; Liao, L.W. Spatio-temporal evolution and influencing factors of global food security pattern from 2000 to 2014. Acta Geogr. Sin. 2020, 75, 332–347. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  4. Maxwell, S.; Smith, M. Household Food Security: A Conceptual Review; UNICEF and IFAD: New York, NY, USA; Rome, Italy, 1992; pp. 1–6. [Google Scholar]
  5. Jiang, L.; Xu, F.B. Review on climate change and food security. Int. Inf. 2011, 5, 37–42. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  6. Lubkemann, S.C. Special issue on the demography of conflict and violence. J. Peace Res. 2005, 42, 493–508. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  7. Pinstrup-Andersen, P. Food security: Definition and measurement. Food Secur. 2009, 1, 5–7. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  8. Nord, M.; Andrews, M.; Steven, C. Household food security in the United States. SSRN Electron. J. 2008, 7. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  9. FAO; IFAD; WFP. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015 Meeting the 2015 International Hunger Targets: Taking Stock of Uneven Progress; FAO: Rome, Italy, 2016. [Google Scholar]
  10. Barrett, C.B. Measuring food insecurity. Science 2010, 327, 825–828. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  11. Caraher, M.; Coveney, J. Food Poverty and Insecurity: International Food Inequalities; Springer International Publishing: Geneva, Switzerland, 2016; pp. 11–18. [Google Scholar]
  12. Ma, J.J.; Zhang, X.S.; Gu, H.B. Study on the index system of food security measurement and early warning. Manag. World 2001, 2, 154–162. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  13. Zhang, S.J.; Yang, X.L. Construction of China’s food security evaluation system based on sustainable development. Theory Reform 2010, 2, 82–84. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  14. Tambo, J.A.; Uzayisenga, B.; Mugambi, I.; Bundi, M. Do plant clinics improve household food security? Evidence from Rwanda. J. Agric. Econ. 2020, 72, 96–116. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  15. Maitra, C.; Rao, D.S.P. Poverty—Food security nexus: Evidence from a survey of urban slum dwellers in Kolkata. World Dev. 2015, 72, 308–325. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  16. Gu, B.J.; Zhang, X.L.; Bai, X.M.; Fu, B.J.; Chen, D.L. Four steps to food security for swelling cities. Nature 2019, 566, 31–33. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  17. Kabubo, M.J.; Mulwa, R. Adaptation to climate change and climate variability and its implications for household food security in Kenya. Food Secur. Sci. Sociol. Econ. Food Prod. Access Food 2019, 11, 1289–1304. [Google Scholar]
  18. Waha, K.; Mark, T.W.; Fritz, S.; Linda, S.; Philip, K.T.; Jannike, W.; Herrero, M. Agricultural diversification as an important strategy for achieving food security in Africa. Glob. Chang. Biol. 2018, 24, 3390–3400. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  19. Cui, M.M.; Nie, C.H. Research on evolution of China’s food security based on index evaluation system. Bull. Chin. Acad. Sci. 2019, 8, 910–919. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  20. Coates, J. Build it back better: Deconstructing food security for improved measurement and action. Glob. Food Secur. 2013, 2, 188–194. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  21. Zhang, Y.H.; Liu, C.Q.; Guo, L.L. Evaluation and strategic thinking of China’s food security situation. China Rural Surv. 2015, 1, 2–13. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  22. Foley, J.A.; Ramankutty, N.; Brauman, K.A.; Cassidy, E.S.; Gerber, J.S.; Johnston, M.; Mueller, N.D.; O’Connell, C.; Ray, D.K.; West, P.C.; et al. Solutions for a cultivated planet. Nature 2011, 478, 337–342. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  23. Häyhä, T.; Franzese, P.P.; Paletto, A.; Fath, B.D. Assessing, valuing, and mapping ecosystem services in Alpine forests. Ecosyst. Serv. 2015, 14, 12–23. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  24. Tiina, H.; Franzese, P.P. Ecosystem services assessment: A review under an ecological-economic and systems perspective. Ecol. Model. 2014, 289, 124–132. [Google Scholar]
  25. Natasha, N.; Alessandro, P.; Fabio, P.; Madeleine, G.; Pier, P.F. Assessing, valuing and mapping ecosystem services at city level: The case of Uppsala (Sweden). Ecol. Model. 2018, 368, 411–424. [Google Scholar]
  26. Sergio, U.; Amalia, Z.; Pier, P.F. Shared wealth or nobody’s land? The worth of natural capital and ecosystem services. Ecol. Econ. 2010, 70, 778–787. [Google Scholar]
  27. Vihervaara, P.; Franzese, P.P.; Buonocore, E. Information, energy, and eco-exergy as indicators of ecosystem complexity. Ecol. Model. 2019, 395, 23–27. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  28. Gao, G.W.; Liu, T. Global warming and food security in China. Ecol. Econ. 2014, 30, 120–122. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  29. Deutsch, C.A.; Tewksbury, J.J.; Tigchelaar, M.; Battisti, D.S.; Merrill, S.C.; Huey, R.B.; Rosamond, L. Naylor increase in crop losses to insect pests in a warming climate. Science 2018, 361, 916–919. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed] [Green Version]
  30. Gregory, P.J.; Ingram, J.S.I.; Brklacich, M. Climate change and food security. IDS Bull. 2005, 360, 2139. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  31. Reif, C.; Lana, M.; Graef, F.; Dietrich, O.; Schindler, J.; Helming, K.; Koenig, H.; Sieber, S. Combining analytical methods for assessing food security across the food value chain a conceptual integrated approach. Outlook Agric. 2015, 44, 11–18. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  32. Droogers, P. Adaptation to climate change to enhance food security and preserve environmental quality: Example for southern Sri Lanka. Agric. Water Manag. 2004, 66, 15–33. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  33. Josef, S.; Francesco, N.T. Global food security under climate change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2007, 104. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  34. Christiansen, F. Food security, urbanization and social stability in China. J. Agrar. Chang. 2009, 9, 548–575. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  35. Satterthwaite, D.; McGranahan, G.; Tacoli, C. Urbanization and its implications for food and farming. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 2010, 365, 2809–2820. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  36. Xu, L.L.Y. Food security in the process of urbanization: A review. Res. Agric. Mod. 2020, 41, 557–567. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  37. Farhad, T.; Ehsan, R.; Naoyuki, Y. Energy and food security: Linkages through price volatility. Energy Policy 2019, 128, 796–806. [Google Scholar]
  38. Subramaniam, Y.; Masron, T.A.; Azman, N.H.N. Biofuels, environmental sustainability, and food security: A review of 51 countries. Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 2020, 68. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  39. Thornhill, S.; Vargyas, E.; Fitzgerald, T. Household food security and biofuel feedstock production in rural Mozambique and Tanzania. Food Secur. 2016, 8, 953–971. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  40. Zhu, L. Food security and agricultural changes in the course of China’s urbanization. China World Econ. 2011, 19, 40–50. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  41. Wossen, T.; Thomas, B. Climate variability, food security and poverty: Agent-based assessment of policy options for farm households in Northern Ghana. Environ. Sci. Policy 2015, 47, 75–107. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  42. Zhang, W.F.; Cao, G.X.; Li, X.L.; Zhang, H.Y.; Wang, C.; Liu, Q.Q.; Chen, X.P.; Cui, Z.L.; Shen, J.B.; Jiang, R.F.; et al. Closing yield gaps in China by empowering smallholder farmers. Nature 2016, 537, 671–674. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  43. Arouna, A.; Lokossou, J.C.; Wopereis, M.C.S.; Bruce-Oliver, S.; Roy-Macauley, H. Contribution of improved rice varieties to poverty reduction and food security in sub-Saharan Africa. Glob. Food Secur. 2017, 14, 54–60. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  44. Francisco, C.; Samyuktha, K.; Berber, K. Impacts of a national lock down on small holder farmers 2019 income and food security: Empirical evidence from two states in India. World Dev. 2020, 136, 105069. [Google Scholar]
  45. Long, H.L.; Ge, D.Z.; Zhang, Y.N.; Tu, S.S.; Qu, Y.; Ma, L. Changing man-land interrelations in China’s farming area under urbanization and its implications for food security. J. Environ. Manag. 2018, 209, 440–451. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  46. Wang, Y.S. The challenges and strategies of food security under rapid urbanization in China. Sustainability 2019, 11, 542. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  47. Liu, X.; Shi, L.J.; Bernie, A.E.; Sun, S.K.; Zhao, X.N.; Wu, P.T.; Wang, Y.B. New challenges of food security in Northwest China: Water footprint and virtual water perspective. J. Clean. Prod. 2020, 245. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  48. Science—Spatial Science. New findings from Aristotle university of Thessaloniki update understanding of spatial science (designing africultures services to support food security in Africa). Sci. Lett. 2020. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  49. Farrukh, M.U.; Bashir, M.K.; Rola-Rubzen, F. Exploring the sustainable food security approach in relation to agricultural and multi-sectoral interventions: A review of cross-disciplinary perspectives. Geoforum 2020, 108, 23–27. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  50. Skaf, L.; Buonocore, E.; Dumontet, S.; Capone, R.; Franzese, P.P. Applying network analysis to explore the global scientific literature on food security. Ecol. Inform. 2020, 56. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  51. Grum, B.; Assefa, D.; Hessel, R.; Woldearegay, K.; Kessler, A.; Ritsema, C.; Geissen, V. Effect of in situ water harvesting techniques on soil and nutrient losses in Semi-Arid Northern Ethiopia. Land Degrad. Amp. Dev. 2017, 28, 1016–1027. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  52. Li, H.; Pan, Y.G.; Wang, L. Biblimetrix: Introduction and evaluation of a new bibliometrics software based on R language. J. Acad. Libr. Inf. Sci. 2018, 36, 93–104. [Google Scholar]
  53. Xie, H.L.; Zhang, Y.W.; Zeng, X.J.; He, Y.F. Sustainable land use and management research: A scientometric review. Landsc. Ecol. 2020, 1–31. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  54. Huang, Y.Q.; Li, F.Q.; Xie, H.L. A scientometrics review on farmland abandonment research. Land 2020, 9, 263. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  55. Xie, H.L.; Zhang, Y.W.; Choi, Y.; Li, F.Q. A scientometrics review on land ecosystem service research. Sustainability 2020, 12, 2959. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  56. Zong, Q.J.; Yuan, Q.J.; Shen, H.Z. Analysis of hot spots of library science research in China in 2010 based on VOSviewer. Library 2012, 4, 88–90. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  57. Zhang, X.M.; Estoque, R.C.; Xie, H.L.; Murayama, Y.; Ranagalage, M. Bibliometric analysis of highly cited articles on ecosystem services. PLoS ONE 2019, 14. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  58. Li, J.; Hale, A. Output distributions and topic maps of safety related journals. Saf. Sci. 2016, 82, 236–244. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  59. Jeong, D.H.; Koo, Y. Analysis of trend and convergence for science and Technology using the VOSviewer. Int. J. Contents 2016, 12, 54–58. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  60. Lu, X.; Peng, W.L.; Huang, X.J.; Fu, Q.Q.; Zhang, Q.J. Homestead management in China from the “separation of two rights” to the “separation of three rights”: Visualization and analysis of hot topics and trends by mapping knowledge domains of academic papers in China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). Land Use Policy 2020, 97, 104670. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  61. Iwona, G.; Beata, B.; Marzena, T.; Danuta, K.K. Mapping the structure of food waste management research: A Co-keyword analysis. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 4798. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  62. Li, J.; Chen, C.M. CiteSpace: Technology Text Mining and Visualization; Capital University of Economics and Business: Beijing, China, 2016. [Google Scholar]
  63. Cheng, H.L. Knowledge atlas and hotspot evolution of food safety research in China: A visual analysis based on CiteSpace. World Agric. 2020, 4, 102–111. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  64. Zhu, K.; Han, G.M.; Su, C.M. Tracing analysis of the research situation of domestic land finance from the perspective of Knowledge Atlas. China Land Sci. 2018, 242, 88–94. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  65. Yang, H.; Shao, X.; Wu, M. A review on ecosystem health research: A visualization based on CiteSpace. Sustainability 2019. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  66. Xie, H.L.; Zhang, Y.W.; Wu, Z.l.; Lv, T.G. A bibliometric analysis on land degradation: Current status, development, and future directions. Land 2020, 9, 28. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  67. Johan, S.; Pasquamaria, S. Mixed messages on prices and food security. Science 2012, 335, 405–406. [Google Scholar]
  68. FAO. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2013: The Multiple Dimensions of Food Security; FAO: Rome, Italy, 2013. [Google Scholar]
  69. Lal, R. Soil carbon sequestration impacts on global climate change and food security. Science 2004, 304, 1623–1627. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  70. Zhao, X.; Zhu, H.; Dong, K.; Li, D. Plant community and succession in lowland grasslands under saline–alkali conditions with grazing exclusion. Agron. J. 2017, 109, 2428–2437. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  71. Frieder, G.; Götz, U.; Jana, S.; Hannes, J.K.; Hadijah, A.; Mbwana, H.A.; Anja, F.; Lutengano, M.; Henry, M.; Laurent, N.K.; et al. Expert-based ex-ante assessments of potential social, ecological, and economic impacts of upgrading strategies for improving food security in rural Tanzania using the ScalA-FS approach. Food Secur. 2017, 9, 1255–1270. [Google Scholar]
  72. Jana, S.; Frieder, G.; Hannes, J.K.; Devotha, M.; Paul, S.; Sieber, S. Sustainability impact assessment to improve food security of smallholders in Tanzania. Environ. Impact Assess. Rev. 2016, 60, 52–63. [Google Scholar]
  73. Harry, H.; Götz, U.; Constance, R.; Frieder, G.; Sieber, S. Local biofuel production for rural electrification potentially promotes development but threatens food security in Laela, Western Tanzania. Reg. Environ. Chang. 2015, 15, 1181–1190. [Google Scholar]
  74. Vasant, P.G.; Zhou, Z.Y. Food demand and the food security challenge with rapid economic growth in the emerging economies of India and China. Food Res. Int. 2014, 63, 108–124. [Google Scholar]
  75. Reshmita, N.; Luan, Y.B.; Yang, W.M.; Yang, C.; Chen, W.; Li, Q.; Cui, X.F. Changes in arable land demand for food in India and China: A potential threat to food security. Sustainability 2015, 7, 5371–5397. [Google Scholar]
  76. Mary, N.; Shonil, B.; Gudrun, B.K. Contribution of nutrient diversity and food perceptions to food and nutrition security among smallholder farming households in Western Kenya: A case study. Food Nutr. Bull. 2018, 39, 86–106. [Google Scholar]
  77. Mwangi, V.; Owuor, S.; Kiteme, B.; Giger, M.; Jacobi, J.; Kirui, O. Linking household food security and food value chains in North West Mt. Kenya. Sustainability 2020, 12, 4999. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  78. Megan, M.; Bernard, P.; Timothy, J.; Lutta, W.M.; Gordon, M.H. On developing a scale to measure chronic household seed insecurity in semi-arid Kenya and the implications for food security policy. Food Secur. 2018, 10, 571–587. [Google Scholar]
  79. Maurice, M.; Moses, W.N.; Caroline, W.K.; Ngianga-bakwin, K. The effect of education on household food security in two informal urban settlements in Kenya: A longitudinal analysis. Food Secur. 2016, 8, 743–756. [Google Scholar]
  80. Zachary, M.G.; Hugo, D.G.; Menale, K.; Tadele, T. Impact of metal silos on households2019 maize storage, storage losses and food security: An application of a propensity score matching. Food Policy 2013, 43, 44–55. [Google Scholar]
  81. Shiferaw, B.; Kassie, M.; Jaleta, M.; Yirga, C. Adoption of improved wheat varieties and impacts on household food security in Ethiopia. Food Policy 2014, 44, 272–284. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  82. Kang, S.Z.; Hao, X.M.; Du, T.S.; Tong, L.; Su, X.L.; Lu, J.N.; Li, X.L.; Huo, Z.L.; Li, S.E.; Ding, R.S. Improving agricultural water productivity to ensure food security in China under changing environment: From research to practice. Agric. Water Manag. 2017, 179, 5–17. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  83. Zezza, A.; Tasciotti, T. Urban agriculture, poverty, and food security: Empirical evidence from a sample of developing countries. Food Policy 2010, 35, 265–273. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  84. Baiphethi, M.N.; Jacobs, P.T. The contribution of subsistence farming to food security in South Africa. Agrekon 2009, 48, 459–482. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  85. Holden, S.; Shiferaw, B. Land degradation, drought and food security in a less-favoured area in the Ethiopian highlands: A bio-economic model with market imperfections. Agric. Econ. 2002, 30, 31–49. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  86. Holly, V.; John, W.; Shelagh, K.; Hannah, F.; Samantha, D.; Nora, P.C.; Guarino, L.; Ruth, E.; Blanca, L.; Nigel, M. A prioritized crop wild relative inventory to help underpin global food security. Biol. Conserv. 2013, 167, 265–275. [Google Scholar]
  87. Ewing, M.; Msangi, S. Biofuels production in developing countries: Assessing tradeoffs in welfare and food security. Environ. Sci. Policy 2008, 12, 520–528. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  88. Frison, E.A.; Cherfas, J.; Hodgkin, T. agricultural biodiversity is essential for a sustainable improvement in food and nutrition security. Sustainability 2011, 3, 238–253. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  89. Youn, S.; Taylor, W.W.; Lynch, A.J.; Cowx, I.; Beard, T.D.; Bartley, D.; Wu, F. Inland capture fishery contributions to global food security and threats to their future. Glob. Food Secur. 2014, 3, 3–4. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  90. Hillbruner, C.; Egan, R. Seasonality, household food security, and nutritional status in Dinajpur, Bangladesh. Food Nutr. Bull. 2008, 29, 221–231. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  91. Munir, A.; Hanjra, M.; Ejaz, Q. Global water crisis and future food security in an era of climate change. Food Policy 2010, 35, 365–377. [Google Scholar]
  92. Babatunde, R.O.; Qaim, M. Impact of off-farm income on food security and nutrition in Nigeria. Food Policy 2010, 35, 303–311. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  93. Owusu, V.; Abdulai, A.; Abdul-Rahman, S. Non-farm work and food security among farm households in Northern Ghana. Food Policy 2010, 36, 108–118. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  94. Ninno, C.D.; Dorosh, P.A.; Subbarao, K. Food aid, domestic policy and food security: Contrasting experiences from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Food Policy 2006, 32, 413–436. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  95. Belton, B.; Asseldonk, I.J.M.V.; Thilsted, S.H. Faltering fisheries and ascendant aquaculture: Implications for food and nutrition security in Bangladesh. Food Policy 2014, 44, 77–87. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  96. Dorosh, P.A.; Dradri, S.; Haggblade, S. Regional trade, government policy and food security: Recent evidence from Zambia. Food Policy 2009, 34, 350–366. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  97. Johnson, N.; Burek, P.; Byers, E.; Falchetta, G.; Flörke, M.; Fujimori, S.; Havlik, P.; Hejazi, M.; Hunt, J.; Krey, V.; et al. Integrated solutions for the water-energy-land nexus: Are global models rising to the challenge? Water 2019, 11, 2223. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  98. Byers, E.; Gidden, M.; Leclère, D.; Balkovic, J.; Burek, P.; Kristie, E.; Greve, P.; Grey, D.; Havlik, P.; Hillers, A.; et al. Global exposure and vulnerability to multi-sector development and climate change hotspots. Environ. Res. Lett. 2018, 13. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  99. Palazzo, A.; Vervoort, J.M.; Mason-D’Croz, D.; Rutting, L.; Havlík, P.; Islam, S.; Bayala, J.; Valin, H.; Kadi, H.; Thornton, P.; et al. Linking regional stakeholder scenarios and shared socioeconomic pathways: Quantified West African food and climate futures in a global context. Glob. Environ. Chang. 2017, 45, 227–242. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed] [Green Version]
  100. Ye, L.M.; Tang, H.J.; Wu, W.B.; Yang, P.; Nelson, G.C.; Mason-D’Croz, D.; Palazzo, A. Chinese food security and climate change: Agriculture futures. Econ. Open Access Open Assess. J. 2014, 8, 1–39. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  101. Kiselev, S.; Romashkin, R.; Nelson, G.C.; Mason-D’Croz, D.; Palazzo, A. Russia’s food security and climate change: Looking into the future. Econ. E.J. 2013, 7, 1–66. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  102. Soussana, J.F.; Lutfalla, S.; Ehrhardt, F.; Rosenstock, T.; Lal, R. Matching policy and science: Rationale for the ‘4 per 1000—Soils for food security and climate’ initiative. Soil Tillage Res. 2017, 188. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  103. Frank, S.; Havlík, P.; Soussana, J.; Levesque, A.; Valin, H.; Wollenberg, E.; Kleinwechter, U.; Fricko, O.; Gusti, M.; Herrero, M.; et al. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture without compromising food security? Environ. Res. Lett. 2017, 12. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  104. Fujimori, S.; Hasegawa, T.; Krey, V.; Riahi, K.; Bertram, C.; Bodirsky, B.L.; Bosetti, V.; Callen, J.; Després, J.; Doelman, J.; et al. A multi-model assessment of food security implications of climate change mitigation. Nat. Sustain. 2019, 2, 386–396. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  105. Velde, M.; Linda, S.; You, L.Z.; Balkovič, J.; Fritz, S.; Khabarov, K.; Obersteiner, M.; Wood, S. Affordable nutrient solutions for improved food security as evidenced by crop trials. PLoS ONE 2013, 8. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  106. Hidalgo, D.M.; Witten, I.; Nunn, P.D.; Burkhart, S.; Bogard, J.R.; Beazley, H.; Herrero, M. Sustaining healthy diets in times of change: Linking climate hazards, food systems and nutrition security in rural communities of the Fiji Islands. Reg. Environ. Chang. 2020, 20, 1341–1353. [Google Scholar]
  107. Smith, P.; Haberl, H.; Popp, A.; Erb, K.; Lauk, C.; Harper, R.; Tubiello, F.N.; Pinto, A.S.; Jafari, M.; Sohi, S.; et al. How much land-based greenhouse gas mitigation can be achieved without compromising food security and environmental goals? Glob. Chang. Biol. 2013, 19, 2285–2302. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed] [Green Version]
  108. Douxchamps, S.; Wijk, M.T.V.; Silvestri, S.; Moussa, A.S.; Quiros, C.; Ndour, N.Y.B.; Buah, S.; Somé, L.; Herrero, M.; Kristjanson, P.; et al. Linking agricultural adaptation strategies, food security and vulnerability: Evidence from West Africa. Reg. Environ. Chang. 2016, 16, 1305–1317. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  109. Godfray, H.C.J.; Beddington, J.R.; Crute, I.R.; Haddad, L.; Lawrence, D.; Muir, J.F.; Pretty, J.; Robinson, S.; Thomas, S.M.; Toulmin, C. Food security: The challenge of feeding 9 billion people. Science 2010, 327, 812–818. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed] [Green Version]
  110. Su, H.N.; Lee, P.C. Mapping knowledge structure by keyword co-occurrence: A first look at journal papers in technology foresight. Entometrics 2010, 85, 65–79. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  111. Chen, C.; Dubin, R.; Kim, M.C. Emerging trends and new developments in regenerative medicine: A scientometric update (2000–2014). Expert Opin. Biol. Ther. 2014, 14, 1295–1317. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed] [Green Version]
  112. Lee, P.C.; Su, H.N. Investigating the structure of regional innovation system research through keyword co-occurrence and social network analysis. Innovation 2010, 12, 26–40. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  113. Zhang, Y.H. Differentiation and analysis on several basic problems of food security. Issues Agric. Econ. 2018, 5, 27–33. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  114. Marttunen, M.; Mustajoki, J.; Sojamo, S.; Ahopelto, L.; Keskinen, M. A framework for assessing water security and the water–Energy–Food nexus—The case of Finland. Sustainability 2019, 11, 2900. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
  115. FAO. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019: Safeguarding Against Economic Slowdowns and Downturns; United Nations: New York, NY, USA, 2019. [Google Scholar]
  116. Zhang, R.S. Food security: Food trade regime and food aid regime. J. Int. Econ. Law 2008, 3, 565–584. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  117. Yuan, P.; Ding, Z.B. The connecting mode of small farmers and Modern Agricultural Development: A case study of Liangping, Chongqing. Reform 2018, 6, 106–114. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  118. Wang, X.J.; He, Y.P.; Jiang, H.P. Food security in china during the period of the 14th five-year plan: Situation, problems and countermeasures. Reform 2020, 9, 27–39. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  119. Miller, C.M.; Tsoka, M.; Reichert, K. The impact of the social cash transfer scheme on food security in Malawi. Food Policy 2010, 36, 230–238. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  120. Gladwin, C.H.; Thomson, A.N.; Peterson, J.S.; Anderson, A.S. Addressing food security in Africa via multiple livelihood strategies of women farmers. Food Policy 2001, 26, 177–207. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
  121. Zhang, L.C.; Fan, Y.C. A study on the local government bonds supporting the policy of “storing grain in the land”. Econ. Rev. J. 2020, 10, 124–130. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
  122. Wu, Y.Z.; Sun, X.F. Retrospect and prospect of China’s land policy on the 40th anniversary of reform and opening-up: From the perspective of urbanization. China Land Sci. 2018, 7, 7–14. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
Land 10 00119 g001 550
Figure 1. Bibliometrix and the recommended science-mapping workflow. FS—food security; WOS—Web of Science.
Figure 1. Bibliometrix and the recommended science-mapping workflow. FS—food security; WOS—Web of Science.
Land 10 00119 g001
Land 10 00119 g002 550
Figure 2. Food security research articles published from 1990 to 2019.
Figure 2. Food security research articles published from 1990 to 2019.
Land 10 00119 g002
Land 10 00119 g003 550
Figure 3. Authors’ production over time in the field of food security.
Figure 3. Authors’ production over time in the field of food security.
Land 10 00119 g003
Land 10 00119 g004 550
Figure 4. Country-based scientific production in the field of food security.
Figure 4. Country-based scientific production in the field of food security.
Land 10 00119 g004
Land 10 00119 g005 550
Figure 5. Discipline distribution of food security research.
Figure 5. Discipline distribution of food security research.
Land 10 00119 g005
Land 10 00119 g006 550
Figure 6. National cooperation networks.
Figure 6. National cooperation networks.
Land 10 00119 g006
Land 10 00119 g007 550
Figure 7. Author cooperation networks.
Figure 7. Author cooperation networks.
Land 10 00119 g007
Land 10 00119 g008 550
Figure 8. Co-citation network of food security.
Figure 8. Co-citation network of food security.
Land 10 00119 g008
Land 10 00119 g009 550
Figure 9. Co-occurrence network for food security keywords.
Figure 9. Co-occurrence network for food security keywords.
Land 10 00119 g009
Land 10 00119 g010 550
Figure 10. Burst keywords for food security.
Figure 10. Burst keywords for food security.
Land 10 00119 g010
Land 10 00119 g011 550
Figure 11. Thematic evolution of the food security research (1990–2019).
Figure 11. Thematic evolution of the food security research (1990–2019).
Land 10 00119 g011
Table
Table 1. Top 10 authors in the field of food security research.
Table 1. Top 10 authors in the field of food security research.
Authorh-IndexTCNPPY_Start
Sieber S6130142014
Nord M10430132000
Fasse A6120122014
Graef F6128102014
Grote U6129102014
Hendriks S57592011
Herrero M940692013
Lal R9341292004
Frongillo E631081999
Havlik P822382013
Notes: TC: total article citations; NP: number of papers; PY_start: starting year of the papers.
Table
Table 2. Top 10 highly producing countries in food security research.
Table 2. Top 10 highly producing countries in food security research.
RegionNumber of ArticlesTotal CitationsAverage Citations Per Article
USA195221,87811.2
Canada48633736.9
UK464577912.5
Australia41027286.7
China34632569.4
South Africa27712984.7
Germany26923918.9
India2268994.0
Italy210302014.4
Kenya18215198.3
Table
Table 3. High frequency key words and their occurrences in the field of food security.
Table 3. High frequency key words and their occurrences in the field of food security.
WordsOccurrencesWordsOccurrences
food security1407India47
climate change163hunger46
food insecurity129livelihoods45
nutrition98dietary diversity43
poverty75Ethiopia43
sustainability57food and nutrition security43
Africa54policy41
gender54sub-Saharan Africa40
China53vulnerability39
household food security49adaptation38
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Xie, H.; Wen, Y.; Choi, Y.; Zhang, X. Global Trends on Food Security Research: A Bibliometric Analysis. Land 2021, 10, 119. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10020119

AMA Style

Xie H, Wen Y, Choi Y, Zhang X. Global Trends on Food Security Research: A Bibliometric Analysis. Land. 2021; 10(2):119. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10020119

Chicago/Turabian Style

Xie, Hualin, Yuyang Wen, Yongrok Choi, and Xinmin Zhang. 2021. "Global Trends on Food Security Research: A Bibliometric Analysis" Land 10, no. 2: 119. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10020119

Note that from the first issue of 2016, this journal uses article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

Article Metrics

Back to TopTop