Food security is one of the most challenging topics globally; however, the concept of food security has taken on additional dimensions that are general and are less detailed. This study aims to identify the intellectual structure of food security research and the changes in this structure. This paper analyzed 3169 documents from the Web of Science database through a bibliometric review. A review of the published documents shows an increasing trend over the past 46 years. In accordance with co-occurrence analysis, 125 keywords were grouped into five clusters: food security and sustainable development; food security and socioeconomic factors; food security policy and governance; coping strategies for poverty, inequality, and hunger; and modern food security management. This study identifies four streams within food security research: sustainability and environmental, socioeconomic, cultural, and political factors. The paper concludes that even though food security might investigate many significant areas, other new dimensions should still be considered. Further gaps in the literature emerge that present avenues for future research directions. Reviewing indicators and techniques of food security assessment and identifying high-risk groups should be a priority.

Ensuring food security is one of the Millennium development goals, with most developing countries endeavouring to alleviate hunger levels. Indeed, 923 million individuals are undernourished in the world. Furthermore, United Nations and the Food and Agriculture Organisation report a large majority of food-insecure individuals live in rural areas of developing and less developed countries, making it more crucial to study the various challenges to food security in rural areas. This research investigates the major challenges to food security in rural areas of Iran using the Delphi technique run in three rounds with a panel of experts consisting of 27 academic faculty members in the field of food security, rural development, agriculture, and executive staff. Findings identified eight categories as main challenges to food security: policy, economic, knowledge and information, infrastructural, cultural, access to food, climate conditions, and social challenges.

Farm work is considered among the highest risk jobs throughout the world. Occupational health behavior is a critical factor that influences agricultural job-related injuries and diseases. Yet, while educational programs have been set up to encourage farmers to behave more safely, many of these programs do not sufficiently take into account the factors that induce farmers to exhibit risky behavior. The present study aimed to explore the factors underpinning farmers’ occupational health behavior using the Health Belief Model (HBM). The study was conducted using aquestionnaire survey of 382 farmers representative of the farmers of Kermanshah province, Iran. The face and content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by apanel of experts in occupational health, and its reliability by apilot study establishing internal consistency measured by Cronbach’s alpha. The results showed that four dimensions of the HBM (perceived susceptibility, perceived benefits, cues to action, and perceived self-efficacy) influence farmers’ occupational health behavior (FOHB), with the theoretical model accounting for 54.9% of the variance of FOHB. The findings confirm the potential of the HBM to explain FOHB and the relevance of using the theory in studying farmers’ protective behaviors such as the use of chemical pesticides, protection against sunlight, protection of hearing, etc.

Different countries face diverse challenges for Conservation Agriculture (CA) development. The main purpose of this study was to examine the challenges of applying CA in Iran from the perspective of experts and farmers. A focus group method was used to investigate the challenges. The research sample consisting of farmers and experts of CA in different provinces includes those 19 experts and 15 farmers. Inductive content analysis and coding (open, axial, and selective coding) were employed to analyze the farmers’ and experts’ discussions. The findings showed that the challenges of applying CA in the studied provinces could be divided into 6 general categories: institutional-infrastructure (7 concepts), economic (5 concepts), training-research (2 concepts), environmental (4 concepts), mechanization (2 concepts), and cognitive (2 concepts) challenges. The economic and institutional-infrastructure challenges were the most frequent related to applying CA. It can be concluded that to solve the challenges of applying CA, it is necessary to link various sectors of government (the Ministry of Agriculture), education and research (Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization), and industry together. But farmers themselves are also a major contributor to meet the challenges of CA development through participation in planning CA project and training-extension programs. Therefore, farmers’ communities should also pave the way for a transition from conventional agriculture to CA with their participation.