NEXRUR Workshop Shows What’s Holding Rural Businesses in Agriculture Back & What Could Drive Them Forward

From high land prices in the Netherlands to complex EU seed regulations in Spain, community-led business models in agriculture and related bio-based production systems across Europe are facing growing external pressures. Despite the challenges, with the right support, local communities can play a central role in building more resilient, sustainable, and locally rooted food systems.

The NEXRUR project brings together partners from across Europe to better understand, support, and strengthen community-led agricultural business models. Through collaboration, research, and exchange between local actors, the project works to identify and address barriers as well as unlock opportunities that allow such businesses to thrive.

Mapping real-world challenges

In April 2026, project partners from 8 European countries and China, who conducted 21 diverse and complementary NEXRUR community-led agriculture businesses, gathered in Burgos, Spain to map the real-world challenges, from unfair pricing and complex agricultural and land use regulations to climate pressures and digital tools.

Facilitated by Hafiz Ahmad, Project Manager at the CSCP, the session used a PESTEL framework to help participants reflect on the political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal landscape to find the motivation, barriers and opportunities for community-led agricultural business models.

“Fair pricing stood out as a persistent challenge: farmers and rural actors involved in community-led business models in agriculture struggle to earn fair incomes while consumers remain sensitive to price. Access to finance is also difficult, with banks being oriented toward capital-intensive models that do not fit rural agricultural enterprises. EU and local subsidies are available but hard to access for smaller or seasonal operations, while overly complex regulations, including EU seed laws and nitrogen rules, create disproportionate burdens for small-scale and organic producers.”, says one participant.

Between barriers and opportunities

From the power of community to the dual edge of technology, the workshop helped identify these key aspects:

Strong relationships in the community stood out as a key assets. Initiatives like Oosterwold demonstrated what participatory models can achieve when local people are  genuinely committed to shaping and maintaining their own community-led agricultural and rural development processes. Yet demographic decline and the difficulty of making rural agricultural professions attractive to younger generations remain real concerns, alongside high labour demands and the slow pace of building consumer awareness.

Technology presented a dual edge: precision farming tools and digital sales platforms offer efficiency gains, but adoption costs are high and complexity can become a barrier in itself.

“An overly complicated webshop actually hindered rather than helped the producers we work with.“, noted one of the participants.

Climate change loomed large, from extreme frost events and water scarcity to soil health challenges and nitrogen pollution conflicts.

One participant noted that “…many community businesses are already contributing to climate resilience, local employment, and sustainable food production, but current economic systems often fail to recognise or adequately reward these contributions.”

The way forward

Despite these challenges, the workshop revealed multiple opportunities, such as growing consumer interest in local and quality produce, new EU funding streams, and the emergence of cooperative structures that help individual producers share costs and risks.

These insights will feed directly into NEXRUR’s baseline analysis and inform stakeholder engagement and future policy discussions, helping to shape more supportive conditions for community-led rural businesses across Europe.

The project will run for four years, from 2026 to 2029. It is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme.

For further questions, please contact Ahmad ur Hafiz.