COVID-19 and agri-food value chain: a systematic review and bibliometric mapping

Abstract

PurposeThe COVID-19 has had a diversified and dynamic impact on the food and agricultural sector, particularly in the agri-food value chain. Although a good number of articles were published in various countries and continents covering various aspects of the impact of COVID-19 on the agri-food value chain, no significant studies were found related to the mapping of published literature to know about the scenario and current trend research. The study aims to perform a systematic review and bibliographic mapping in the agri-food value chain to provide insights into the same.Design/methodology/approachArticles included in the Scopus database from January 1, 2020 to July 10, 2021 are considered. After initial screening and inclusion criteria, 41 articles have been selected to perform a systematic review which is published in the agri-food value chain. In addition to this, by considering the growth of the online food market, systematic mapping with the application of bibliometric analysis is performed to know the trend of the publications. Co-occurrence analysis with VOS viewer software version 1.6.16 is used for making network maps and supports the visualization of these maps.FindingsThe synthesis of the findings reveals that four broad themes recur in the articles: namely, food security and crisis during the pandemic, food price fluctuations, the impact of COVID-19 and disruption in the agri-food value chain and resilience strategies to strengthen the value chain. Alongside, the synthesis of the findings, this study describes the geographical coverage, methodologies used, sector/industry-specific context of the articles and scope of future research. In co-occurrence analysis with keywords, four clusters are identified related to the online food market and are categorized as “COVID-19 and Online food delivery services,” “Consumer satisfaction to online food delivery services,” “Food delivery system” and “Demographic impact on online food market.”Research limitations/implicationsThe study considers only the article from the Scopus database and article published between January 1, 2020 and July 10, 2021. Future studies are encouraged related to impact analysis studies of resilient strategies suggested by various authors by considering multiple databases.Originality/valueThis study will be beneficial for scholars and policymakers to know what is trending in the agri-food value chain and policymakers can implement various resilience strategies as discussed to mitigate the impact. The future research scope highlighted in this paper will encourage scholars and academicians to explore this area and will provide in-depth understanding.

The COVID-19 pandemic and global food security: a bibliometric analysis and future research direction

“…Empirical evidence indicates that the proportion of food-insecure households has increased during the pandemic due to the loss of jobs and livelihood opportunities amongst the poor and vulnerable sections of the society (Arndt et al ., 2020; Workie et al ., 2020; Kansiime et al ., 2021). The scientific community responded promptly by investing the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security globally (Reardon et al ., 2020; Das and Roy, 2021; Kumar et al ., 2021; Suresh et al ., 2022). Figure 1 depicts the number of scientific publications on COVID-19 and food security during the last three years based on search data from Scopus.…”

“…Considering the huge jump in the knowledge body of literature on COVID-19-related research and, at the same time, the existence of unknown knowledge on the implications of COVID-19, a number of studies have attempted to analyse the overall pattern of COVID-19 research investigation in society (ElHawary et al ., 2020; Gong et al ., 2020; Kaya and Erbay, 2020; Yu et al ., 2020; Wang and Tian, 2021). There is specific research on the implications of COVID-19 on various segments of life, such as entrepreneurship (Xu et al ., 2021), economics and business (Açikgöz and Günay, 2020; Verma and Gustafsson, 2020; Chandra et al ., 2021), the agri-food supply chain (Sharma et al ., 2020; Barbosa, 2021; Das and Roy, 2021) and agricultural production and food security (Okolie and Ogundeji, 2022; Ohlan and Ohlan, 2022).…”

“…Okolie and Ogundeji (2022) analysed the effect of COVID-19 on agricultural production and food security based on 174 published papers from Web of Science and Scopus and concluded that interruptions in the agricultural supply chain induced the supply and demand shocks with a negative impact on food security. Another bibliometric study by Das and Roy (2021) covered the scientific research on COVID-19 and the agri-food value chain based on 41 articles indexed in the Scopus database from 1 January 2020 to 10 July 2021 that mainly covered the issues related to COVID-19 and online food delivery services, consumer satisfaction to online food delivery services, the food delivery system and demographic impact on the online food market.…”

Gendered impact of COVID-19 on consumption of perishable and nonperishable food commodities in Pakistan

“…Arndt et al (2020) reported that COVID-19 induced income shocks affected the livelihoods of people severely, especially in developing countries with limited economic resources and social security systems. The COVID-19 pandemic has also negatively affected the functioning of food markets by disturbing the supply chain of perishable food commodities (Das and Roy, 2021;Laborde et al, 2020). Therefore, the unavailability of perishable commodities in the markets can also be a reason for the reduction in the consumption of perishable food commodities.…”

Trends and Research on Covid-19 and Farmers Using Vosviewer

“…Zyoud et al (2022) found that studies related to clinical research were the most frequent. Other very recent bibliometric analyses regarding COVID-19 focused on topics such as: business and management (Verma and Gustafsson, 2020); supply chains (Fabeil et al, 2023); agrifood chains (Das and Roy, 2022); nutrition (Zyoud et al, 2022); tourism (Viana-Lora and Nel-lo-Andreu, 2022); agricultural production and food security (Okolie and Ogundeji, 2022); social sciences (Singh and Verma, 2022); education (Zhang et al, 2022); and nanotechnology (Lunardi et al, 2022). Despite the availability of previous reviews, there are, to our knowledge, no publications that address the topic of farmers.…”