[Photo/VCG]

The Next Generation Sustainable Business Models and Monitoring for Rural Resilience and Innovation (NEXRUR)-China Kickoff Meeting was held from Oct 10 to 11 in Xiamen.

The project focuses on new sustainable business and production models for farmers and rural areas, a key area of China–EU agricultural collaboration. It aims to facilitate mutual learning between China's rural vitalization strategy and the European Union's Green Deal.

The project addresses three challenges: enhancing agricultural productivity, revitalizing rural areas, and increasing farmers' income. It targets three interconnected objectives – science, technology, and application – to develop new sustainable approaches for rural communities.

Since its launch in 2015 as the China-EU flagship program, the project has been the largest in terms of funding, research investment, scope, and workload.

The research team is led jointly by the Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB), Germany, bringing together 11 Chinese institutions and 21 European institutions from nine countries.

A 13-member multidisciplinary advisory group has been established, chaired by Zhong Yongguan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The Experts specialize in agriculture, the environment, economics, and policy, providing comprehensive guidance throughout the project lifecycle.

At the meeting, Xu Yaoyang, researcher at Institute of Urban Environment, and Professor Philipp Grundmann from ATB signed an agreement to deepen collaboration, advancing the construction of a China–EU research case-based innovation network and promoting the exchange of experiences.