Agricultural value chains serve as a critical pillar in the global food and economic system, linking various actors along the value chain to facilitate the smooth functioning and seamless flow of goods, services, and information. Over the past two decades, agricultural value chain research has expanded substantially, reflecting its growing significance in addressing food security, sustainability, and inclusive development. However, the literature remains fragmented across disciplines, theories, and methodological approaches, making it complex to identify coherent knowledge structures and future research priorities. This study provides an integrated overview of agricultural value chain research published between 2000 and 2024 by synthesizing 933 articles retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science. The Bibliometrix package in R and VOSviewer was utilized to analyze the data. For the systematic review, an approach called TCCM has been employed. The findings reveal that studies conducted in this field have an upward trend with a growth rate of 17.47%, with the Journal of Cleaner Production and Food Policy as the leading publishers. The literature is theoretically anchored mainly in transaction cost, institutional, market failure, and value chain frameworks, with a predominant focus on the emerging country context in micro-level analyses. By integrating bibliometric and TCCM approaches, this paper offers a structured synthesis of agricultural value chain literature and contributes to areas of further research aimed at strengthening sustainability-oriented and methodologically rigorous value chain studies.
Jeevan et al. (Sun,) studied this question.