NEXT GENERATION SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODELS AND MONITORING FOR RURAL RESILIENCE AND INNOVATION

Objective

Rural areas and agriculture are facing major economic, social and environmental challenges regarding climate change, biodiversity loss and water supply. As a consequence, there is a need for new or improved innovative business and production models in rural areas that tackle these challenges and have impact on sustainability, both upstream and downstream of their business. NEXRUR´s main objective is to investigate the innovation dynamics and strategies for change in rural areas, through international cooperation between the EU and China, enabling farmers and their communities to develop, select and upscale new or improved sustainable business models and monitor their economic, social and environmental impact on rural resilience. The project is addressed to the Area A of the topic. NEXRUR will generate new knowledge on community-led agricultural business models, bringing together conceptual with practical research, thereby contributing to the generation of a knowledge base and facilitating co-design and co-innovation in a network of 22 diverse community cases (15 in the EU and 7 in China) and 7 selected start-up cases (5 in the EU and 2 in China) based on sustainability performance criteria. Besides, NEXRUR will verify the social and environmental performance of community-led agricultural businesses in different contexts, agri-food value chains, pedoclimatic zones and socioeconomic and environmental conditions in the EU and China. NEXRUR´s results comprise a summary of tested and improved pathways, strategies, tools and policy recommendations for the successful community-led businesses model development. Both the new knowledge generated and a monitoring framework for agricultural businesses and associated tool focused on environmental and social KPIs derived from the project, will be widely disseminated in the EU and China inspiring the uptake of new or improved production activities able to increase the prosperity of farmers.