Sustainability indicators in Agriculture: A Review and Bibliometric analysis using Scopus database

Abstract

Indicators are being used in many agricultural sustainability assessment methods, but disputes about a common indicator for the definition of sustainability have resulted in so many various indicators and methods of measurement. The objective of this review is to provide a bibliometric analysis of sustainability pillars and indicators that are significantly prevalent. In addition, this paper evaluates the impact of pillars and indicators on scientific research through the analysis of their citation and trend. Using Scopus database, a total of 30 articles related to crops farming have been selected and more than 500 indicators were analyzed. This study only looked at the top 3 indicators of each pillar which were discussed in at least 7 articles and can be used to measure farm sustainability in different crop production fields: (soil erosion, crop diversity and pesticides) for the environmental pillar, (education and training) for the social pillar, and (profitability, productivity and farm income) for the economic pillar. Results also showed that the environmental pillar is the most tackled and cited with a mean citation of about 60. Pesticides on the other hand is found to be the oldest indicator in terms of its average year of publication. It was the most cited indicator in 2005 of more than 250 citations. The least cited indicators are farm income and training with less than 10 mean citations. In addition, the economic pillar is considered one of the recently discussed and widely implemented with a total of 7 published articles in 2020. The obtained results may be viewed as a set of indicators that can be considered in future policies to detect significant challenges, and improve agricultural sustainability strategies.