Organic Livestock Production: A Bibliometric Review

Due to the increasing interest in organic farming, an overview of this research area is
provided through a bibliometric analysis conducted between April and May 2019. A total of 320
documents were published up until 2018 on organic livestock farming, with an annual growth rate of
9.33% and a clear increase since 2005; 268 documents have been published in 111 journals. Germany
is the country with the largest number of published papers (56 documents). Authors’ top keywords
(excluding keywords used for running the search) included: animal welfare (29 times), animal health
(22 times), cattle (15 times), grazing (10 times), and sheep (10 times). This could indicate that more
research has been done on cattle because of the importance of this species in Germany. Moreover,
the prevalence of the terms ‘animal welfare’ and ‘animal health’ may indicate that the research on
organic livestock production has been focused on these two areas. The bibliometric analysis indicates
that: (i) countries focused the organic livestock production research on their main production, and (ii)
more research in species other than cattle and sheep is needed.