The Fourth International Conference was held online (planned to be held in Montpellier, France), March 24-26, 2021. Over 100 Scholars from 25 different countries participated in this conference. The conference theme was “Thinking Urban-Rural Interactions through Food and Land Use Issues,” which focused on the analysis of urban-rural interactions by way of food and land issues.

Recently, Prof. Hualou Long, a researcher at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been elected as a member of the Executive Committee of the Commission on the Sustainability of Rural Systems (CSRS) of the International Geographical Union (IGU). 　

The Third International Conference was held in Bogor, Indonesia, October 22-24, 2019. Over 150 Scholars from China, Japan, Sweden, France, Singapore, Australia and Senegal gathered at Bogor Agricultural University and shared with their studies in the fields of urbanization, rural and agricultural development as well as land use.The president of IGU, Emeritus Prof. Yukio Himiyama joined the meeting and gave advices to the committee members to pursue a better commission development.

The Second International Conference was held in Jönköping, Sweden, October 17-19, 2018. Scholars from Sweden, China, France, Holland, UK and Australia gathered and shared their studies in the fields of sustainable rural development and land use. The conference “Policy, research and development trends for rural revitalization in a Post-Rural World” aims at analyzing rural development trends and investigating the relationship between rural transformation and land use with a critical assessment of current rural policies.

Inaugural meeting of the IGU-AGLE executive committee was held in 27th, 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.

The First International Conference on Global Rural Development and Land Capacity Building was held on August 26-29, 2017 in Yulin City, Shaanxi Province, China. Over 240 people from 17 different countries/districts participated in this conference. A key question was considered regarding rural decline, namely how to investigate the relationship between rural transformation and land use with a view to contributing to sustainable agriculture and rural development.

The conference "Global Rural Development and Land Capacity Building" , will be held on August 26-29, 2017, Yulin City, China, aims to analyse rural decline and investigate the relationship between rural transformation and land use with a view to contributing to sustainable agriculture and rural development. This conference is the inaugural conference of the IGU Commission on Agricultural Geography and Land Engineering which was formally estabilished in late 2016 (http://rard.aicas.cn/post?postId=1085).

On 19 April 2017, Vietnam News reported on the relevant academic points made by members of the Centre's team in their report at the 25th Annual Conference of the International Geographical Union's Professional Committee on the Sustainability of Rural Systems (CSRS):

The Executive Committee is pleased to announce that a new IGU Commission (C16.39) on Agricultural Geography and Land Engineering has been formally established under the direction, as chair, of Professor Yansui Liu of the Institute of Geographic Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.