Sustainable Consumption and Production of Edible Plants in the Context of Reaching the EU Climate Neutrality by 2050: A Literature Review

Abstract

Background: Human population has been overexploiting natural resources for many decades. Consumerism drives a strong economy, but at the same time it degrades the environment. The solution is to turn it into sustainable development. In this study, our aim was to determine how the quest for sustainable consumption was perceived in the current scientific literature; Methods: A total of 712 papers from the Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases were investigated. Descriptive statistics and VOSviewer (version 1.6.18.) and Wordcloud software were used for further analysis. The analysis involved investigating publication trends over time, engaged countries and funding agencies, co-authorships, document types, thematic categories, sustainable development goals orientation, and the most frequently occurring words. Results: Word clouds created in the WordArt program based on the titles and abstracts indicated “food” to be the most frequently occurring word. The content of the articles was analyzed based on three term clusters: (1) “food waste”, “waste”, “food security”; (2) “agriculture” and “vertical farming”; and (3) “energy”. Conclusions: Analyzed articles surpassed the European Union, indicating the global range of striving for sustainability. The co-occurrence of the following sustainable development goals (SDGs) was indicated in the study: no. 1 (“no poverty”), no. 2 (“zero hunger”), no. 3 (“good health and well-being”), no. 6 (“clean water and sanitation”), no. 7 (“affordable and clean energy”), no. 8 (“decent work and economic growth”), no. 9 (“industry, innovation and infrastructure”), no. 10 (“reduced inequalities”), no. 12 (“responsible production and consumption”), no. 13 (“climate action”), no. 14 (“life below water”), and no. 15 (“life on land”).