Investigating published research towards a fossil-energy-free agriculture transformation

Abstract

The defossilisation of the agricultural sector is driven by intense worldwide academic research on non-fossil and energy-efficient agriculture, and the acknowledgment of the need for sustainable farming practices. For this purpose, not only technical transformations but also socio-technical system changes towards sustainability need to take place in a co-evolutionary manner. This paper investigates structural and qualitative characteristics of the knowledge produced by research on fossil-energy-free agriculture. We provide evidence on the worldwide research directions, as well as investigate whether academic research and publicly funded research projects foster knowledge creation for the desired transformation. Social network analysis and dictionary-based content analysis are used to relate transformational capacity to project profiles in the European Union to evaluate past funding schemes and to improve the shape of future research programs.