The Digital Agricultural Revolution: A Bibliometric Analysis Literature Review

TLDR

Digital technologies in agriculture can improve practices to adapt to climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and promote sustainable intensification for food security, and some scholars view this as a Digital Agricultural Revolution that will boost sustainable farming. The study seeks evidence of the ongoing Digital Agricultural Revolution, clarifying its origins, meaning, and future trajectory. Using bibliometric analysis of 4,995 Web of Science articles from 2012–2019, the authors examined DAR terminology, influential publications, and emerging research streams. The analysis revealed five main DAR research streams—Climate‑Smart Agriculture, Site‑Specific Management, Remote Sensing, Internet of Things, and Artificial Intelligence—and highlighted trending topics from 2017 to 2019.

Abstract

The application of digital technologies in agriculture can improve traditional practices to adapt to climate change, reduce Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions, and promote a sustainable intensification for food security. Some authors argued that we are experiencing a Digital Agricultural Revolution (DAR) that will boost sustainable farming. This study aims to find evidence of the ongoing DAR process and clarify its roots, what it means, and where it is heading. We investigated the scientific literature with bibliometric analysis tools to produce an objective and reproducible literature review. We retrieved 4995 articles by querying the Web of Science database in the timespan 2012-2019, and we analyzed the obtained dataset to answer three specific research questions: i) what is the spectrum of the DAR-related terminology? ; ii) what are the key articles and the most influential journals, institutions, and countries? ; iii) what are the main research streams and the emerging topics? By grouping the authors' keywords reported on publications, we identified five main research streams: Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), Site-Specific Management (SSM), Remote Sensing (RS), Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI). To provide a broad overview of each of these topics, we analyzed relevant review articles, and we present here the main achievements and the ongoing challenges. Finally, we showed the trending topics of the last three years (2017, 2018, 2019).