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Open research questions in Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development

95 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 4,196 Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • Although there is a substantial body of literature examining existing national reserve systems, there is limited literature that applies institutional theory to compare them across divergent contexts and to assess the multiple factors influencing their establishment, motivation, design, and governance.

    Managing shock and uncertainty: a comparative institutional analysis of divergent contexts of national food reserve systems · 2026 · DOI

  • However, participatory and transdisciplinary approaches are more often cited than implemented, and the political dimensions of AKIS remain underexplored, limiting understanding of the levers and barriers shaping their contribution to systemic change.

    Moving forward AKIS research and practice for agroecological transitions in Europe · 2026 · DOI

  • Although these dynamics fall beyond the scope of this paper, they raise important questions for future research, particularly about how processes of standardization not only regulate production techniques but also reorganize the socio-spatial relations that sustain culinary traditions, privileging products aligned with market rationalities over those rooted in historically situated foodways.

    Articulation and disarticulation of Kars cheeses within dairy commodity chains · 2026 · DOI

  • Similarly, omitting the LFPR does not account for differences between the population and the effective labour force size, thereby overestimating the pro- jected number of agricultural employment (Supplementary Fig.

    Agricultural workforce as a potential bottleneck of future cropland availability · 2026 · DOI

  • Acknowledgments While this study provides a comprehensive economic assessment of agroecological transition, the social health, and environmental aspects were explored qualitatively and not quantified. Future studies could focus on quantifying the environmental, social, and health impacts of agroecological interventions as well as expanding such analyses to other value chains. This will strengthen generalizability and provide more targeted guidance for policy, investment, and sus- tainable food systems development.

    Agroecological transition can boost Kenya’s food system: evidence from a cost–benefit analysis of the mango value chain · 2026 · DOI

  • Knowledge co-creation (KCC) is imperative for agroecological development, yet the extent to which agroecological KCC processes balance scientific rigor, local relevance, and legitimacy, and the extent to which they connect to transformative agroecological farming remains poorly understood.

    How transformative is agroecological knowledge co-creation? Insights from a systematic literature review · 2024 · DOI

  • To overcome this gap in knowledge and analysis, we developed the lifeways and territorial innovation approach that has been used in research in Chiapas, Mexico, through quantitative and qualitative methodology: workshops and interviews, with the aim of analysing complementarity between capital, strategy, expected results and values of the lifeways of coffee-growing families that facilitate or limit their capacity of response to problems.

    Lifeways of families in coffee-growing territories: vulnerability and response capacity · 2024 · DOI

  • While analyses of work relations in CSA abound, it remains uncertain how such diversification is made possible and how it is shaped by the micro-politics of and power relations in these initiatives.

    Work in progress: power in transformation to postcapitalist work relations in community–supported agriculture · 2023 · DOI

  • This article fills this gap in research and argues that the demands of the British colonial government for food supplies, along with other policies geared toward agricultural regulation such as the Pullen Scheme, led to such inflation of food prices in urban centers that rural producers could not meet the demand for foodstuffs.

    British Food (In)security Policies in Colonial Nigeria and Popular Reactions in the Southwestern and Southeastern Provinces, 1939–45 · 2023 · DOI

  • The article, based on ethnographic research in the Moshi District, argues that beyond changes induced by the ethical business organization, farmers are trapped in “darkness” due to having insufficient information on their trading partner and limited ability to empower and transform their cooperatives.

    “We Are in the Darkness”: The Impact of Fair Trade from the Perspective of Coffee Growers in the Kilimanjaro Region · 2022 · DOI

  • Extractivism is thereby not limited to the exploitation of mineral and fossil resources but also includes agro-extractivism (Benegiamo 2020; see also Agrarian resources are likewise primary commodities that are widely exported from Africa to create value at other scales and locations rather than used to feed people on the continent.

    Extractivism, informal work and strategies for political-economic transformation · 2021 · DOI

  • This paper looks to make use of this framework to better understand an under-researched case study, The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), to show how it has resulted in a continuing ecologically induced genocide of the Indigenous Malind Anim.

    The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE): An Ecologically Induced Genocide of the Malind Anim · 2020 · DOI

  • It proceeds by (1) establishing the relative absence of the region from the leading peasant studies journals; (2) synthesizing the region’s political economy and waves of knowledge production; (3) highlighting local traditions which speak to the questions of food sovereignty and agro-ecology; and (4) listing a series of theoretical, historical, and analytical avenues which remain to be addressed.

    Does the Arab region have an agrarian question? · 2020 · DOI

  • However, past work mostly paints a homogenous and holistic picture of institutional efficiency across a given CPR, while limited research has investigated differences in terms of institutional efficiency between appropriators with various levels of institutional experience.

    Relationships between institutional success and length of tenure in a Kenyan irrigation scheme · 2019 · DOI

  • The research must not be limited to the domestic law of a given country, but must also take into account international agricultural law and EU agricultural law (if viewed from the Polish perspective) as well as the interdependencies and tensions between the phenomena of globalisation, regionalisation and the locality.

    Contemporary challenges of agricultural law: among globalisation, regionalisation and locality (introductory considerations) · 2018 · DOI

  • The paper looks at an under-studied rural development scheme, known as the North Shaba Project/Projet du Nord Shaba (PNS), which was funded by USAID from 1976 to 1986.

    An obscured revolution? USAID, the North Shaba Project, and the Zaïrian administration, 1976–1986 · 2014 · DOI

  • While these developments have received some critical attention of late, existing accounts of the ‘financialization of food’ are limited to the extent that they view finance as an external force with emphasis placed on the unnaturalness of its relationship with agriculture and its distortive effects on agricultural markets.

    Feeding finance: a critical account of the shifting relationships between finance, food and farming · 2014 · DOI

  • Findings This paper finds that, while FLO has demonstrated a commitment to improving producer participation and its governance structures appear to be evolving accordingly, much remains to be done in order to ensure that individual producers are genuinely engaged in decision making and have a voice.

    Fairtrade governance and producer voices: stronger or silent? · 2013 · DOI

  • In collaboration with chemistry technicians from the Agricultural Experiment Station in Rio Piedras, Asenjo proved that the vitamin C content of a little known fruit called acerola surpassed that of any other foodstuffknown at the time (Asenjo 1946; Asenjo and Freire de Guzman 1946).

    Feeding the Colonial Subject: Nutrition and Public Health in Puerto Rico, 1926-1952 · 2013

  • … In order to understand how the KWPA won this prestigious award—even though South Korea's agriculture contributes only around 2 percent of the nation's total GDP, while the nation's market economy is ranked fourteenth among 188 countries—the changes in South Korea's agriculture under the modern agri-food system need to be examined.

    The Struggle for Food Sovereignty in South Korea · 2013 · DOI

  • Research limitations/implications The paper is limited to the extent that one believes in the validity of autoethnography, however, it is argued that these findings are a reflection of the wider nature of the agricultural community, immersed as it is in life and death, and that this culture is significantly different to that commonly addressed by textbooks.

    Sticks and stones: decision making by rumour · 2009 · DOI

  • This article tries to build on and deepen previous attempts at understanding the complex and confusing dynamics involving the banana elite, the state, and various segments of organized farmworkers and to fill in an important gap in the literature, using an integrated, rights-based, and process-oriented historical-institutional approach.

    Struggles for land and livelihood · 2005 · DOI

  • Examining this issue through the lens of the FAO, the paper raises issues regarding current scientific approaches to food and agriculture as forms of governance and suggests further study into the power of global public institutions to re‐imagine food and agriculture beyond the confines of particular nation‐states.

    ‘A World Free From Hunger’: Global Imagination and Governance in the Age of Scientific Management · 2003 · DOI

  • Co-operative members “consider increased mechanization and the use of chemicals to be decisive factors that will have a positive impact on their economic and social status”, and agree that only co-operative farms (in contrast with private farms; opinions about the State farms have not been studied) offer any real prospects from this point of view. 42 As one of the higher officials in Dutch extension put it: “In general these possibilities simply do not exist, because there are insufficient outlets for the production”.

    SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF FARM MECHANIZATION: FINAL REPORT ON A CROSS‐NATIONAL RESEARCH · 1969 · DOI

  • While efforts are being made to produce more variety of crops at home, the forces of the Industrial Revolution are being increasingly applied to expand commercial agriculture in the low latitudes and to a lesser degree in the Orient. I n these two apparently conflicting tendencies lies a prime ,Can economic distribution and social control be so challenge to society. organized by political means as to commercialize the remaining agricultural regions of the earth? If so, will the accomplishment wreck the unstable structure of commercial agriculture already in existence ?

    Major Agricultural Regions of the Earth · 1936 · DOI

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95 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 4,196 Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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