The scientific domain of «agricultural and applied economics» is an open issue. In this paper, we analyse the JEL codes of the articles published in seven major agricultural economics journals in the period 2000-11, in order to define which disciplines and which research areas are the «core business» of today’s agricultural and applied economists. A special attention has been given to the sub-sample of the Italian studies, since a new scientific society in this area (AIEAA) has been recently founded by a group of Italian economists.