Frog-rice project helps village jump ahead

Wu is also general manager of Zhejiang Changxing Daohuaxiang Agricultural Technology. Located in Chengshan, the company mainly focuses on agricultural scientific research and sales of edible agricultural products.

The company was established in 2013 and began breeding the frogs on 5.3 hectares of land the following year, Wu said, explaining the development of the business.

In 2015, the breeding area was expanded to 13.3 hectares, and the following year, the company began to develop its combined cultivation model.

By 2020, the model had caught on with some local farmers, who used it to raise their incomes, thus promoting China's goals of rural vitalization and common prosperity, Wu said.

The project has attracted a great deal of attention from both local villagers and the government.

"Last year, the collective economic cooperatives of Chengshan, Heping town, participated in the project. With the help of my company's technology, 27.8 hectares of local peach forests were used to plant rice and raise frogs, solving the unemployment problem of low-income seniors in the village," Wu said. He added that the value of the company's output reached 9.75 million yuan ($1.38 million) last year, making a net profit of 4.43 million yuan.

Li Qicai, a member of the Communist Party of China's branch in Chengshan, said the village "warmly welcomed this project".

"More than 27 hectares of fertile land used for the combined cultivation of rice and black-spotted frogs have been rented out by villagers, who each earn an average annual rent of about 800 yuan per mu ($1,706 per hectare)," Li said.

"The project has helped more than 30 elderly villagers find work in their hometown, and has helped more than a dozen poor families who were each given free shares to earn dividends."

As of this year, more than 200 hectares of land have been used for the combined cultivation project in other places in Huzhou and in other cities such as Hangzhou and Jiaxing, which has raised incomes and provided jobs for more than 400 rural households.