Exploring the Topics of Soil Pollution and Agricultural Economics: Highlighting Good Practices

• Main Author: Vítor João Pereira Domingues Martinho
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-01-01
• Series: Agriculture
• Subjects: literature review; soil health; farming performance; web of science; vosviewer; clusters
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/10/1/24

The evolution of the agricultural sector around the world has generated positive and negative externalities at social, economic and environmental levels. These impacts from the modernization of agriculture would not be, themselves, problematic if the global balance were positive, in sustainable development. However, in some cases, the negative externalities overlap the positive outcomes, namely in soil pollution from the application of fertilizers and crop protection products. From this perspective, the main objective of this study is to explore the relationships between the two following topics: soil pollution and agricultural economics. For this a literature survey was performed from the Web of Science platform based on these two topics put together. From the Web of Science, 45 studies were found and were clustered and explored first through the software VOSviewer. The literature explored with this software was clustered into three groups and shows that the studies related with these topics highlight, namely, three aspects: the problem in question, the benefits and the losses. After this network analysis, the several documents were studied deeper through literature review. Agricultural policies, farmers perceptions, stakeholders’ involvement, farms’ multifunctionality, sustainability and adjusted agricultural practices are all questions to be taken into account in the feedback between soil pollution and agricultural economics.