A bibliometric analysis of farming resilience and farmer performance in agricultural sustainability research

Climatic variability, market uncertainty, and institutional constraints are increasing pressure on agricultural systems, yet research on farming resilience, operational efficiency, and market systems is fragmented in the literature into distinct streams. This study incorporates bibliometric analysis of literature from 2016 to 2026 in Web of Science, a structured literature review, and qualitative content analysis to determine the thematic evolution, intellectual structure, and theoretical basis of research on farming resilience and farmer performance. Bibliometrix and VOSviewer were used for the performance analysis and for science mapping, including keyword co-occurrence, thematic mapping, thematic evolution, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling using Orange. The results reveal a substantial increase in research activity, and the areas of resilience, sustainability, and market efficiency are becoming more and more integrated rather than discrete ones. Four thematic clusters were derived: farming resilience, operational efficiency in agricultural markets, perceived market efficiency, and farmer performance. Thematic evolution analysis implies a transition from efficiency and market-oriented approaches to more resilience-based, sustainability-oriented, and technology- based approaches. This study adds to the literature by mapping the thematic similarities and dissimilarities of previously disjointed research streams, and tracing their co- occurrence and evolution in literature around market efficiency, in the context of farmer behavioural and informational aspects, along with resilience and operational efficiency over the past decade (2016–2026). The thematic patterns identified are aligned with SDG 2, SDG 12, and SDG 13, but bibliometric evidence suggests a correlation and not a causal link between themes and sustainability outcomes.