A retrospective evaluation of the intellectual structure of private agricultural and food standards research in global trade

PurposeThe aim of this article was to present a retrospective assessment of the intellectual structure of private agricultural and food standards research in global trade. This study was motivated by the increasing role of standards and certifications in governing global agricultural and food trade.Design/methodology/approachThe current investigation was carried out with bibliometric methods using VOSviewer software. Techniques such as citation, co-citation, keyword co-occurrence, keyword evolution and co-authorship analyses were performed to tackle the research questions. Articles were extracted from Scopus database for the period 1998–2022 (30th August 2022) with selected keywords (“Private food standard*” OR “food standard*” OR “agri-food standard*” AND “agri*” OR “agro*” OR “farm*” OR “food*” AND “international trade” OR “global trade” OR “international business”) along certain filters (subject – Economics and Business management: language – English: Document – article and review articles and source – journals).FindingsThe results show that the intellectual structure of private agricultural and food standards research in global trade has evolved around five clusters, namely: (1) the political economy of food standards, (2) food standards and their challenges in global trade, (3) food standards and integration into value chains, (4) food standards and market access and (5) food standards and exports from developing countries. However, the authors found the research gaps in each of the thematic clusters.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of this study is that the authors focused their attention on certain aspects of bibliometric review, such as the intellectual structure of the field, the citation analysis and the collaboration network. Future research could attempt to explore new field development through bibliographic coupling and deepening of conceptual structure using content analysis by incorporating the research methods used in the respective studies.Practical implicationsThe emerging research areas in private agricultural and food standards in global trade are related to topics on food quality, sustainable development, genetically modified organisms, World Trade Organization, tariff structure, trade agreements, food industry and European Union. However, there is less research and little collaboration between Africa and developed countries. For example, Africa's total publications were (15), while the US had (46), China (15), Belgium (23), Germany (27), Italy (32) and the UK (24).Originality/valueThere are limited studies that have conducted a retrospective evaluation of the intellectual structure of private agricultural and food standards research in the global trade using bibliometric analysis. The present investigation is novel in identifying the thematic research clusters, emerging issues and future research directions. This is more important to developing countries as their agricultural produce face challenges to access markets of the developed world.