1. UNCCD 2nd Scientific Conference
Economic assessment of desertification, sustainable land
management and resilience of arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid
areas. 9 - 12 April 2013 - Bonn, Germany
Research in Agriculture and Climate Change:
A bibliometric appraisal for Latin America
Laura E. Meza (MSc)
FAO Regional Office for Latinamerica
and the Caribbean

2. Systematic review on scientific production on
Ag&CC in 2 phases
• What is the amount of scientific production?
• What are the leading countries/institutions?
Bibliometric • How collaborative is research in Ag&CC?
• What are the topics addressed?
Survey, Case
• How the research priorities are set?
studies • Is the policy design linked to CC
research agenda and vice versa?

3. 20 years period ( from 1990 to 2011) Bibliometric
Search Engine: SciVerse Scopus database (Elsevier) appraisal
Largest database, better representation of non-English and
multidisciplinary journals
Selection criteria
3 keywords clusters (agriculture, climate change, geographic area)
Title article, keywords and abstract
Metaanalysis
Typologies
Typology of journal (Basic
Sc, Environmental, Agronomic, others)
Collaboration (national, with other
LAC, Europe, USA, other)
Country (geographic area of work)
Author affiliation by country
Ag activities (horticulture, livestock, other)
Climate Change subject análisis
(Impacts, Adaptation, Mitigation)

4. Main Findings

5. Latin America and the Caribbean: 10 countries with the higher
volume of total scientific production in agriculture
Number of papers 1990-2011
90000
78985
80000
70000 Preliminary results indicate that Brazil
accounts 40% of the scientific production
60000
in AG&CC, followed by Mexico, Argentina
50000
40000
30000 25570 23768
20000
10576
10000 5428 5210 3188 2669 2156 1968
0

6. Brazil: An exponential increment in scientific
production in agriculture
Average number of paper by year-period
12,000
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
1990-94 1995-99 2000-04 2004-09 2010-11
BR MX AR CL CO

7. Collaboration: First 10 countries with collaboration on
scientific production in agriculture
1990-2011
South American Region

8. Collaboration: First 10 countries with collaboration on
scientific production in agriculture
1990-2011
Central American Region Andean Region

9. Agriculture related scientific production in LAC countries, by field
Percentage of total of agriculture papers, 1990.2011
80.0
70.0
60.0
11.0
50.0
13.3
10.0 9.5 15.2
12.0
40.0 11.7 12.4 20.0 13.8
12.2 10.4
10.9 8.3 14.0
11.1
30.0 9.7 15.1 9.2
5.0 8.9
7.0
13.1
20.0
28.2 30.1
23.9 24.5 24.8 26.5 26.2 23.7
10.0 22.1 22.7
16.2
0.0
LAC ARG BRA CHL COL CRI CUB MEX PER URU VEN
Basic life science Energy & environmental sciences
Medical sciences Mathematics, physics & Earth Scs.
Engineering Socio-economic fields

10. Multidisciplanary
• Combination of fields is relevant for climate change
adaptation in agriculture.
• The lower degree of multidisciplinary agriculture-related
scientific production in LAC is driven by the weight of Brazil,
where the share of multidisciplinary papers is the second
lower (48.4%) among Top 10 countries in the region, only
above Costa Rica (45.0%).
• The most prominent case is Chile (68.2%) with level of
multidisciplinary similar to that Australia & New Zealand
(67.0%)

11. Latin America and Caribbean: scientific production in agriculture
and climate change
Number of papers, by year, 1990-2011
500
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
About Ag&CCinLAC AboutAg&CCinLACbyLAC
Source: SCOPUS..
Notes
1. AboutAg&CCinLAC - Papers about climate change and agriculture in Latin America and
Caribbean
2. AboutAg&CCinLACbyLAC - Papers about climate change and agriculture in Latin America and
Caribbean with authors affiliated in Latin America and the Caribbean

12. Summarizing:
– Increase on the Ag&CC scientific production following the
global trend (IPCC).
– Big portion of the scientific production about the region is lead
by non Latin-American institutions/authors
– In LAC Brazil is leading the scientific production in Ag&CC
– Big weight on mitigation due to the predominance of Brazilian
scientific production (largely devoted to bioenergy)
– Few works relates to vulnerability and food insecurity and
adaptation capacity.
– Large inequity in term of R+D+I in Ag&CC (LAC vs other region,
within LAC, within countries)
– More multidisciplinary and collaboration for CC is needed
– - DLDD is not proper capture for our search criteria.

13. Policy Recommendations :
– To develop incentives that will promote research in areas not
properly covered. i.e Better understanding of the current
systems in term of vulnerability and adaptation capacity in Ag
and CC impacts on food security.
– To ensure stable research teams that effectively support policy
design on Ag&CC.
– To promote collaboration among countries for climate change
in the agricultural research agenda is vital. Particularly,
countries vulnerable to climate change and needed to strength
their research capacities (South-South).
– To enlarge and to facilitate the communication between
science and politics, policy-makers, and in particular farmers.
– Second Phase, involving grey literature and qualified
informants, will help to identify relevant gaps in research.

14. 4th Regional Seminar
AGRICULTURE & CLIMATE CHANGE:
Modeling impacts and Economic assesment
in Agriculture
September 4-5 2013
Santiago, Chile

15. Thanks for your attention!
Meza, Laura1, Rodriguez, Adrián.2, Lamour, Anais2
1Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN
(FAO), Santiago, Chile. E-mail: Laura.Meza@fao.org
2Economic Commission for Latinamerica,
Santiago, Chile. E-mail: Adrian.Rodriguez@eclac.org