Medicinal herb helps boost rural livelihoods

In Shizhu Tujia autonomous county under Chongqing, its 388,200 residents are mainly located in the Wushan Mountains, comprised mainly of hilly countryside.

With a 700-year history in cultivating coptis — a small genus of low-elevation perennial herbs having yellow rhizomes and white or yellow flowers — the county has boosted its production scale and yield to take up about 60 percent of China's total and 50 percent of the global supply.

The plant, whose rhizomes are a well-known Chinese medicinal herb, now generates over 1.28 billion yuan ($180.2 million) of income each year with a cultivation area of some 3,870 hectares, producing 3,000 metric tons annually.

The county, which recorded a GDP of over 23 billion yuan last year, has made coptis cultivation one of its key forest-based industries and a leading specialty commodity, and is boosting its output with an innovative "forestry-coptis coexistence" model.

In the county's Xiangquan village, farmer Yang Fei and his wife are busy harvesting coptis, which was planted in an area of 1.5 mu (0.1 hectare) in a forest five years ago.

"Now it's harvest season for our coptis, with a yield of about 300 kilograms per mu and bringing in an income of some 100,000 yuan per mu," said Yang.

The plant is an angiosperm, with six species distributed in China, which are mainly grown in Chongqing and the provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou, Hunan, Hubei and Shaanxi.

The couple's bountiful harvest benefited from the forestry-coptis coexistence model, which was launched last November with an aim to optimize limited forest resources, promote sustainable coptis industrial development and elevate ecological protection.

The model has been recognized as the only selected case from Chongqing in the National Forestry and Grassland Administration's fourth batch of exemplary forestry reform and development cases.

Shizhu's forestry bureau said that since 2023, the autonomous county has activated idle forest resources and established four demonstration bases among 50-odd demonstration sites, and the new model alone has helped farmers increase their income by some 800 million yuan.

The autonomous county also cooperated with large-scale enterprises to help growers and achieve co-development.

Some major companies, such as Taiji Pharmaceuticals and Chongqing Wanglong Coptis Chinensis Technology Co Ltd, have teamed up with the county to build agricultural practices bases and demonstration projects, helping nurture over 50 village collectives across 18 coptis-growing towns.

More than 10,000 coptis-growing households are now linked together in various scale-operation forms.

The county's Forestry Bureau said Shizhu's coptis industry has transitioned from unsystematic management to systematic development.

Contact the writers at zhuangqiange@chinadaily.com.cn