The Social Dimension of Agribusiness and How It Has Been Measured

The social aspect of sustainability is commonly acknowledged as the least researched among the three fundamental pillars. Specifically in the context of agribusiness, the social themes cover a wide range of topics spanning from basic needs to cultural heritage. For these reasons, we decided to focus our attention on how researchers have been capturing the social aspects of agriculture using sustainability assessment indicators over the past two decades. Based on a previously extensive literature review and on a comprehensive bibliometric study about agricultural social indicators, between 1999 and 2022, this work aims to classify those indicators according to their thematic scope, grouping them in distinct clusters, and subsequently sort the most frequently referenced indicators in each of the defined clusters. Given the data patterns found during our investigation, we also looked for changes in the distribution of social indicators per thematic cluster in two different periods. This research brought attention to the unique characteristics and developments within each identified cluster, revealing a clear increase in concerns related to personal and societal welfare. These concerns particularly revolve around satisfaction with work and active involvement in civic activities (i.e., civic participation). Furthermore, by classifying each indicator as either traditional or emerging, we have been able to confirm this trend toward more principles-driven indicators. The identification of the top five indicators used in each cluster further highlights the multidimensional character of the assessments of social sustainability. Both traditional and emerging social themes are important in assessing the impact of agribusiness demands on workers, communities, and the environment to inform the development of strategies for promoting sustainable and socially responsible practices in the agroindustry. Thus, social indicators covering both components should be dynamically monitored over time, ideally supporting and promoting stakeholder engagement in the development of sustainability evaluation tools. Given the specificities of each societal context where agribusiness takes place, creating assessment models for generic applications may fail to grasp the complexity of social variables. For this reason, we aim to present in the future a set of guidelines and key indicators to implement and integrate into each contextualized model, identifying specificities of communities, workers, and consumers in a particular agribusiness context.