Two faculty members from the Center of Economic Research, Dr. Ahmet Concu and Dr. Xiaoou Liu were invited to attend the 2009 Yangling International Agricultural Science Technology forum themed "Rural Development: Science, Technology, and Financial Policy". Dr. Ahmet Goncu presented his current work on "Weather Derivatives in Agricultural Economics", and Dr. Xiaoou Liu introduced a new view about "Application of New Econometric Methods in Agricultural Economics Research".

The forum was sponsored by the Ministry of Education and organized by Northwest Agricultural and Forestry University. The forum is part of the 2009 Yangliang Agricultural High-Tech achievements exhibition and plays an critical role. 72 scholars and experts from 16 countries, and representatives from 20 domestic universities and research institutes attended the three-day academic discussion.

The forum is composed of 16 keynote speeches and 61 panel discussions. The discussions concentrate on agricultural science and technology, resource use, rural development, innovation of agricultural technology, environment protection and governance, and relevant issues. The speeches also reveal the latest research results on the topics in farmer cooperatives, transformation of the global agricultural research and education, rural development policies and case studies, and land-use policy, etc.