The opening ceremony was hosted by Prof. Hualou Long, deputy director of the CRARD. Bojie Fu, President of GSC, Academician of CAS, Director of the Department of Earth Sciences at National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Michael E. Meadows, Secretary-General and Treasurer of the IGU, Xiulan Ma, Vice Mayor of Yulin Municipal People’s Government, Jinghong Xu, President of Yulin University, Holly Barcus, Chair of IGU-CSRS Commission, Yansui Liu, Chair of the conference organizing committee and Chair of IGU-AGLE Commission, delivered opening addresses and welcome addresses, respectively. Experts and scholars from both home and abroad concur that attention should be paid to the time, international and strategic

Left to right: Hualou Long, Bob Nanes, Holly Barcus, Yansui Liu, Guy M. Robinson, Bojie Fu, Michael E. Meadows, Xiulan Ma, Hans Westlund, Jinghong Xu, Brigitte Nougarèdes

nature of global rural development and land capacity building, and the problem of global rural decline and land degradation should be specially noticed. It is essential to enhance the frontier, systematicness and urgency of international cooperation research.

Keynote speeches were presided over by Dr. Yuheng Li, Secretary of IGU-AGLE Commission. Michael E. Meadows firstly gave a speech entitled “Soil erosion and soil conservation in the wheat belt of the Western Cape Province of South Africa: Historical perspectives, recent trends”, which described how the Western Cape appears to have been the verge of economic collapse due to the severity of soil erosion during the 1940s. A case study of the SW Cape wheat-belt was made to analyze the land change from degradation to restoration, and recent strategy implementation of “Grain to grape”. Bojie Fu delivered a keynote speech entitled “Understanding China’s Ecosystems: Processes, Services and Management”, which presented an analysis of current situation of Chinese ecosystems and introduced Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN), and finally discussed the adaptive management strategies aiming at restoring and improving the capability of ecosystems that provide services. Holly Barcus gave a speech entitled “Contested space, contested livelihoods: An overview of two decades of pasture management and land tenure reform in Mongolia”, which identified three distinct periods of land tenure debate emerging post-1990 in Mongolia, and drew on an extensive review of policy documents and contemporary literature to consider the multi-scalar implications of rapid national growth on internal population redistribution, land use rights, and the underlying importance of place. Guy M. Robinson gave a speech entitled “Local and global impacts on cherry growing: Examples of rural transformation from Shaanxi Province, China and the Adelaide Hills, South Australia”, which analyzed the contrasts and similarities between the two examples in the interplay between the global and the local influences while the Chinese example reflects aspects of the huge transformations affecting the Chinese countryside following the national economic reforms commenced in late 1978. Hans Westlund gave a speech entitled “Transformation of Agriculture and Land-Use in the Post-Urban World: Examples from Sweden and the Stockholm Region”, which studied spatial and temporal changes in land use with a focus on the Stockholm metropolitan region by exploring the number and size of agricultural firms, changes in their main activity and trends of diversification and land prices for various types of land and location. Yansui Liu gave a speech entitled “Land Engineering for Agricultural Sustainability-from China to the world”. He systematically introduced the research background, the innovation system and integration theory of agricultural geography and land engineering, described the four research stations aiming at degraded-land improvement, gully land consolidation, hollowed village consolidation and poverty alleviation, and proposed the frontiers and research plan on agricultural geography and land engineering. Brigitte Nougarèdes gave a speech entitled “A conceptual framework to analyze social justice issues in farmland preservation and development on the urban fringe in France”, which applied the conceptual framework on the case studies and found that French policy alternatives were quite effective regarding land preservation, yet they tend to neglect justice issues and were not effective in resolving other issues such as food security, and impeding the renewal and diversification of farms that would be necessary to develop a multifunctional agriculture and local food systems. Bob Nanes gave a speech entitled “Promotion of local innovation as a support to rural development”, which introduced MIT’s recent research to establish the importance of promoting local innovation as a support to rural development. Yong Chang gave speech entitled “Research of agricultural sustainable development in agro-pastoral ecotone”, which analyzed current problems of agricultural development in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northern China and proposed the sustainable agriculture development measures taking Yulin as the case study.

Five theme-based parallel sessions were set up: rural transformation and governance, rural economic and environmental sustainability, land engineering and modern agriculture, land use and land cover change, poverty reduction and rural inclusive growth. And there were totally 85 presentations and 22 posters. In theme 1 “rural transformation and governance”, presentations were carried out focusing on rural transformation and its driving forces, spatio-temporal characteristics of rural land use change, behavioral analysis of local actors, rural self-constructed gated community, rural hollowing, etc. As for theme 2 “rural economic and environmental sustainability”, participants mainly focused on food security, sustainable agriculture and rural development, rural household's well-being and livelihoods, gender difference and its influence on time-use of off-farm employment, etc. In theme 3 “land engineering and modern agriculture”, scholars analyzed the issues such as restriction factors of land development, scale of agricultural operation and technology diffusion, gully land consolidation in loess region, land consolidation potential and technology, etc. As for theme 4 “land use and land cover change”, participants researched efficiency of land use transformation, spatio-temporal change of arable land and urban land, land use conflict management and homestead release mechanism, etc. In theme 5 “poverty reduction and rural inclusive growth”, scholars discussed the regional characteristics of poverty alleviation, impoverishing factors, poverty reduction mechanism and policy innovation, strategy for rural sustainability, etc. The parallel sessions adopted the ways of academic reports, question discussions and expert reviews, which have achieved good effects.

Inaugural meeting of the IGU-AGLE executive committee was held in 27^th, August, focusing on discussion of the mechanism and system improvement, setting up the planning and programming, conferences organization, construction of communication and networking platform, and other matters. Prof. Yansui Liu proposed that: (1) IGU-AGLE needs to further improve its mechanism and make clear division of labor and cooperation to form resultant force. IGU-AGLE will actively undertake the task of IGU, and take the initiative to undertake academic innovation and communication responsibility; (2) Development plan for the next five years should be scientifically made to strengthen cooperation and exchange programs with the other commissions; (3) Organizing international conferences, strengthening academic exchanges, and promoting discipline development and personnel training should be the focus of IGU-AGLE; (4) Strengthening the construction of IGU-AGLE network platform, creating convenient and efficient channels for academic communication, and promoting discipline development and personnel training. Michael E. Meadows highly praised the innovative work and achievements of IGU-AGLE since its establishment in December, 2016. He offered suggestions on further constructing the platform and promoting international academic exchanges and cooperation. He hopes that IGU-AGLE will continue to work in a scientific, rigorous, and responsible manner, strengthen close cooperation with other IGU commissions, and comprehensively promote the academic research and discipline development in global agriculture, rural transformation and land engineering. Members of the executive committee carried out the brainstorming, discussed the position and development orientation of IGU-AGLE and also proposed its near-term plans and long-term considerations which would lay a solid foundation for sustained rural development.

Closing ceremony was presided over by Dr. Yuheng Li. The conference has established Distinguished Scholar Award, Young Scholar Award, Outstanding Thesis Award, Conference Contribution Award and Special Contribution Award. The awards ceremony was held at the closing ceremony. Then, Yansui Liu read out the proposal of “Global Rural Plan”. He congratulated the successful convening of the conference, summarized the academic exchange and panel discussion of the conference, and expressed his sincere thanks to the organizers, co-organizers and all the participants.

Based on expert consensus and suggestions, the “Global Rural Plan” was jointly launched by IGU-AGLE, IGU-CSRS, and IGU-LUCC. The proposed “Global Rural Plan” suggests that the geographers should take positive action and offer suggestions for effective implementation of rural revitalization program. The proposed “Global Rural Plan” calls for a series of actions: (1) To promote the establishment of the “Global Rural Plan” at the United Nations. It is very considered essential necessary to propose the theme of rural revival to counter the effects of urbanization across the globe; (2) To promote collaborations among the IGU commissions on Agricultural Geography and Land Engineering, Sustainability of Rural Systems, Land Use and Land Cover Change to bring the world’s rural scholars together; (3) To hold the annual global meetings and regional conferences with a rural focus such as rural land in the countryside, agriculture, livelihoods and education; (4) To launch the joint scientific investigation of the socioeconomic, resources and environmental situations of villages of different areal types in the world, and to release a global world’s rural development report; (5) To promote and intensify communications and collaborations with the World Bank, FAO, UNDP and UNEP; and (6) To mobilize resources to support villages in the least developed countries and to seek solutions for rural revival and sustainability. The “Global Rural Plan” is intended to make the world a better place.

To fully understand the problems of degraded land in Mu Us desert and make clear the barriers in agriculture development, post-conference field investigations were arranged for participants to excurse to red clay borrow pit at Qianwantan in Qinhe town in Mu Us desert, the experimental station on optimization engineering of modern agriculture, Yulin national agricultural science and technology park-the experiment station, and new rural development demonstration area - Zhaojiamao village. At the experimental station on optimization engineering of modern agriculture, scholars and researchers exchanged ideas extensively about the optimization engineering technology of land consolidation and seed selection of modern agriculture, investigated field comparison test scheme and recent researches about implementing the order land consolidation and how to sow the improved varieties on the fertile soil. Experts including Michael E. Meadows, Guy M. Robinson, Hans Westlund, Bob Nanes, Brigitte Nougaredes, Rajendra P. Shrestha, Zhixiang She, etc., wrote inscriptions for the scientific design and test achievements. They encouraged the experimenters to make unremitting efforts, work more grass roots research, and take the exploration and innovation to advance the research of land consolidation, modern agriculture and rural integration development.

The success of the conference has offered an important platform for experts' communication in the research field of rural development and land capacity building, which has played an active guiding role in providing new ideas and developing new ways for international academic research and cooperation in the future. Participants reach a consensus that rural decline is a global problem, and focus of urbanization has increased in the cities, and less on the rural areas. It is urgent to further strengthen international cooperation and extensive exchanges on global rural development and land capacity building.