Land Grabbing, Land Use, and Food Export Competitiveness: Bibliometric Study of a Paradigm Shift

Abstract

Land grabbing and land use were and continue to be highly impactful topics for the scientific communities all around the world. Even though land grabbing has been generally approached in relation to transitional economies, agriculture and land grabbing still represent strategic vectors of economic growth, including in the modern economies and knowledge-based societies, mainly because they significantly contribute to assuring food security. Land grabbing is linked to export competitive­ness, as the agricultural production structure imposes specific characteristics of the national production of agri-food products and, in some cases, this is how dependency on the imports is generated, in order to ensure food security. This dependency can occur in the case of a few or more types of agri-food products, based on land use. In this context, this chapter aims at performing comparative bibliometric analysis on the topics of land grabbing and food export competitiveness. Findings highlight the intensification of scientific interests concerning bioeconomy and ecological issues in relation to food trade, land grabbing, and land use, as well as the correlation with traditional topics, such as food safety and climate change.