The 5th Global Land Programme Open Science Meeting (GLP-OSM) was held in Oaxaca, Mexico. The conference, themed "Pathways to Sustainable and Just Land Systems," aimed to promote knowledge sharing and collaboration, discuss the impacts of global and regional changes on humans and nature, explore diverse future pathways, and provide scientific evidence and solutions for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The event was taking place between Nov 4 and 8, and has welcomed hundreds of scholars from countries and regions including China, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the United States, Canada, Japan, India, and Australia.

Six researchers from IARRP, including Yu Qiangyi, Li Huibin, Liang Shefang, Wei Yanbing, and Li Shiyao from the Smart Agriculture Innovation Team, as well as Wen Yanru from the Cultivated Land Quality Conservation Innovation Team, have been invited by Professor Daniel Müller, the Chair of GLP-OSM and Deputy Head at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO) in Germany, to attend the meeting. Yu Qiangyi has co-organized a session titled “Farmland Infrastructure and Its Impacts on Agricultural Land Systems” with You Liangzhi, who is a senior researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and a visiting researcher at IARRP.

Humans continually invest in their farmland by leveling land, building field parcels, developing irrigation and drainage systems, introducing tree and flower belts, and constructing various auxiliary facilities. The development of farmland infrastructure has directly added man-made objects or indirectly altered the production capacity, thereby impacting the agricultural land systems. In recent years, China has implemented the nationwide Well-facilitated Farmland Construction (WFC) campaign to enhance farmland infrastructure, including land consolidation, soil improvement, irrigation and road development etc. with the aim of securing food security and advancing agricultural modernization. However, significant theoretical and technical challenges remain in monitoring and evaluating farmland infrastructure.

This session introduced the scientific concept of farmland infrastructure internationally for the first time. Representatives from China, Germany, and the United States presented academic reports on various topics, including land parcels, soil, agricultural photovoltaics, greenhouses, and breeding facilities. These presentations offered new perspectives and methods for observing, simulating, and evaluating farmland infrastructure. Researchers from Humboldt University, KU Leuven, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, University of Twente, University of Maryland, University of Minnesota, Pennsylvania State University, and Kent State University engaged in extensive discussions on the impacts of farmland infrastructure on the health and sustainability of agricultural land systems.

The GLP-OSM is the highest-level academic exchanging activity in the field of Land System Science. The 5th GLP-OSM follows previous meetings held in Arizona, USA (2010), Berlin, Germany (2014), Beijing, China (2016), and Bern, Switzerland (2019). IARRP has consistently engaged in this prestigious event and has successfully organized the third GLP-OSM in Beijing in 2016. 5th GLP-OSM not only strengthened academic exchanges between IARRP researchers and international experts but also it enhanced IARRP's international reputation and influence in the field of Land System Science.