The Faculty of Agri-food and Environmental Economics is a well-established educational and research leader in Romania in the field of economics, focused on agri-food and environmental sciences. Part of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, the Faculty provides higher education according to the Bologna Process, consisting of three-cycle higher education systems: bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral studies. With many economists professionally trained over the years and with a group of professors focused on research activities with impactful contributions in the field of agri-food and environmental economics, it has become important to study the evolution of research interests manifested in the research papers elaborated by the tenured teaching staff of the Faculty of Agri-food and Environmental Economics. This research paper aims at highlighting the emerging research interests using a quantitative method: bibliometry, a branch of scientometry, based on the scientific papers indexed in the Web of Science until 20 September 2020. The main findings in this paper refer to the fact that waste management, food safety, carbon emissions and decision-making are the topics most frequently approached in the scientific papers indexed in the 2018-2020 period, while topics such as: land-use, agricultural insurance, ecosystems, water, marketing-research are specific to the 2012-2014 period.

The global food value chain encompasses a component of particular importance: the milk market. What makes this component unique is that fact that milk represents an essential part in almost any diet, a key factor for the production of dairy products. The main objective undertook in this research paper was to quantify the pressure put on the global milk chain by Romania. The results highlight that the milk imported quantities represent, on average, 3.5% of the Romanian production of milk in the 2010-2019 period. Romania is a small player in terms of the pressure put on the global milk value chain, from the perspective of milk demand. The loss caused on the Romanian milk chain by the trade deficit can be ameliorated by increasing the national production capacities.

International agri-food markets are staples of food security that ensure nutrition for countries all around the world through trading. In such a globalized economic climate, international agri-food flows shift in patterns rapidly and are subject to numerous risks and challenges such as climate change issues, food insecurity, supply chain disruptions caused by pandemics and many other challenges. Agriculture and food trading have been under a lot of pressure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, by the constantly growing pressure for mitigating climate change issues, while still ensuring food security globally. On top of that, there is also the commitment of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in time, as specified in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, plus the upcoming commitment in the EU for implementing the Green Deal, with direct impact on agriculture and international agri-food trading activities. In this context, the aim of this research was to explore the scientific interest for the topic of food trading with a focus on the 2019-2021 period and highlight emergent trends through quantitative mapping of the keywords associated to the papers published in this field and indexed in the Web of Science. Results show a scientific interest shift from a research area specific to the economic competitiveness of food trading to an area specific to environmental and global food supply concerns.