A multidisciplinary team of students worked at the intersection of data science, policy, and food systems to analyze critical agricultural research shaping the science of food, agriculture, and the environment in the United States. Understanding trends in research topics, funding, and citations over time offers valuable insights for researchers. This study aims to identify trends in research topics and funding in agricultural and applied economics research projects. We analyze a corpus of research papers published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics (AJAE) and Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy (AEPP), two journals with significant impact in the field of agricultural and applied economics. We aim to provide insights into research priorities over the last two decades. The research team analyzed a dataset of agricultural economics research papers to identify trends in research topics and funding patterns over time; used natural language processing techniques for topic extraction; and performed time series analysis on the extracted topics to identify longitudinal trends in research topics and funding.
Project Leads: Drs. Norbert Wilson, Leslie Collins, and Boyla Mainsah
Project Manager: Greg Herschlag
Student Research Team: Darsh Mandera, Abdalrahman Alalwan, Haozhou Zhang, Poojitha Balamurugan
