UNFOLDING THE SCIENTIFIC UMBRELLA OF FOOD TRADING

International agri-food markets are staples of food security that ensure nutrition for countries all around the world through trading. In such a globalized economic climate, international agri-food flows shift in patterns rapidly and are subject to numerous risks and challenges such as climate change issues, food insecurity, supply chain disruptions caused by pandemics and many other challenges. Agriculture and food trading have been under a lot of pressure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, by the constantly growing pressure for mitigating climate change issues, while still ensuring food security globally. On top of that, there is also the commitment of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in time, as specified in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, plus the upcoming commitment in the EU for implementing the Green Deal, with direct impact on agriculture and international agri-food trading activities. In this context, the aim of this research was to explore the scientific interest for the topic of food trading with a focus on the 2019-2021 period and highlight emergent trends through quantitative mapping of the keywords associated to the papers published in this field and indexed in the Web of Science. Results show a scientific interest shift from a research area specific to the economic competitiveness of food trading to an area specific to environmental and global food supply concerns.