Mapping Agricultural Risk for Sustainable Rural Development in the Western Balkans: A Systematic Literature Review and 5 × 5 Evidence-Gap Matrix

Smallholder and family farms in the Western Balkans face intertwined production, market, institutional, human resources and financial risks. This systematic review maps agricultural-risk evidence across seven Western Balkan countries and five enterprise types: crops, livestock, poultry, beekeeping and mixed systems. Following PRISMA 2020, SciSpace was used as a discovery interface for Scopus-indexed literature and was complemented by regional literature compilation, citation tracking and manual verification. From 189 records identified before deduplication, 68 studies published between 2000 and 2025 met the eligibility criteria. Studies were coded by country, enterprise type, risk category and method, and synthesised through a 5 × 5 evidence-gap matrix and complementary risk-overlap analysis. Evidence is concentrated in production risk for crops and livestock, market risk in beekeeping and institutional risk in mixed systems. The main gaps concern human resources risk in crops and poultry and financial risk in poultry. Although 22 studies address multiple risks, only six cover all five major farm risks, mostly descriptively rather than through interaction modelling. The review is limited by uneven regional source visibility and judgement-based evidence coding. The findings support portfolio-based risk management for sustainable rural development rather than isolated hazard responses. The review was not prospectively registered.