Characteristics of “work in agriculture” scientific communities. A bibliometric review

Work is a central concern for sustainable farming systems and rural communities, especially regarding specific issues of the agricultural sector, as the strong decrease in rural employment and the less attractive working conditions. Many articles covering diverse related topics have been published. However, the few studies analyzing the state of worldwide scientific research on work in agriculture give only a fragmented view, since they focus on specialized topics and disciplines. To fill this knowledge gap, the aim of this study was to review the state of research on work in agriculture addressed by the scientific literature, through a bibliometric analysis by country, institution, journal, author, and keywords. Our main finds are that (1) work in agriculture issues is divided into six main research domains: occupational health and safety, labor market and rural employment, labor and farm sustainability, work organization, agricultural policy and agrarian changes, and labor and family farms; (2) these research domains are analyzed by five scientific communities: ergonomics, agricultural economics, livestock farming systems, rural sociology, and agricultural policy; (3) the reference authors, most-cited articles, and main journals were identified for each scientific community; (4) USA, France, and China arise as leaders in the scientific landscape. We show for the first time the characteristics of the main scientific communities worldwide that have performed the most relevant research related to work in agriculture over the past 10 years. This review provides a benchmark for future research on agricultural work-related topics and encourages collaborations between researchers from different scientific communities for interdisciplinary innovation, which support sustainable working conditions in agriculture.