According to news from the 24th meeting of the Sino-German Agricultural Science and Technology Working Group, the project “Application of Information Technology and Innovation of Agricultural Environment's Ecological Management”, which was jointly applied by three scientists (CHEN Xin, XUE Bing, REN Xiaxia) of the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and two scientists (Bettina Matzdorf and CHEN Cheng) of the Leibniz Agricultural Landscape Research Center in Germany, was approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture of the German Federal Government as the Sino-German Agricultural Science and Technology Cooperation Project for 2018-2019.

The project aims to deepen the agricultural technology exchange between China and Germany, jointly explore the application of information technology and market-oriented tools in the ecological management of agricultural environment in China and Germany, reduce the use cost of information technology, develop agricultural precision data collection system, use Big data to optimize agricultural subsidy policies and measures, more effectively combine government, non-governmental organizations, consumers, farmers, enterprises and other stakeholders, create an information exchange platform for the public to understand ecological civilization construction, and create conditions to guide social investment to the agro-ecological governance.

The cooperative project will promote the introduction of German agricultural information technology and ecological management measures to China, improve the levels of China's agricultural information management and precision agriculture practice, and enhance the establishment of cross-disciplinary innovation and cooperation team to serve the rural revitalization, advance ecological civilization construction and build a Beautiful China.

The Leibniz Agricultural Landscape Research Center (ZALF) is affiliated to Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, one of Germany's four major research unions. ZALF focuses on ecosystems and land system sustainability research and has many innovations in land use, agro-ecosystems and ecological governance research. Professor Bettina Matzdorf and CHEN Cheng have long been engaged in agro-ecological governance policies and market-oriented tools research. The AgoraNatura project they are working on is the world's first online marketplace for agro-ecosystem conservation projects.