Mapping the Landscape: A Bibliometric Review of Food security Research in Malaysia

In the middle of the 1970s, the concept of food security first came into existence. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food security is a state in which everyone has constant physical, social, and economic access to sufficient food that is safe, is nutritious, and fits their dietary needs and food choices for an active and healthy life. At the national level, food security refers to the ability of a country to consistently and continuously meet its population's food needs. Despite being a middle-income country, for the last forty years, Malaysia has been a net food importer. In fact, Malaysia is increasingly dependent on imports for its staple foods, particularly rice. With these developments looming, understanding the drivers of food security is critical because it will assist policymakers in staying on top of the primary elements affecting food security in Malaysia. This study used bibliometric analysis to examine 374 indexed studies from the Scopus database from 1985 to 2023 based on defined search phrases relevant to food security in Malaysia. Microsoft Excel 2021 was used to summarise the bibliometric data. In order to study the state of Malaysia's food security, the ten (10) most often used keywords were examined together with the document's type, year of publication, source types, most productive journal in the area, and subject area of document. VOSViewer and Harzing’s Publish or Perish software were used to examine and build a keyword map illustrating the most influencing authors and the relationship between the topic and the co-occurrence network generated by keyword data. In 2011, the number of publications began to evolve. However, there is still debate in this area of research. In order to better understand how the integration of domestic and global markets affects and reacts to food security, this model is a useful tool. Additionally, it might offer a more quantitative means to evaluate food security, especially in terms of determining the specific variables that are responsible for the greatest threat to food security at the national level. Consumers and policymakers would also profit from it.