Eco-friendly rice farming brings the Polypedates megacephalus back: a win-win for green pest control
Listening to frogs croak beside a rice paddy is a childhood memory for many farmers. The Polypedates megacephalus, named after Chiayi's old name "Tirosen", lives at the edges of low-altitude farmland, bamboo groves and orchards. In recent years, more and more farmers have noticed that the more diligently they spray pesticides, the sparser the frog calls become, yet the pests do not seem to decrease. So "spray less, tend the field well" has become a new choice for many farmers after saying goodbye to chemical dependence.
Why tree frogs are the "ecological barometer" of farmland
A frog's skin is thin and moist, extremely sensitive to water quality and pesticides, so it can be called a "barometer" of whether a field is healthy. If tree frogs and other "native residents" can still be seen in a field, it means the water, soil and vegetation are all in good shape. More importantly, frogs are standard masters at catching insects, and in a single night one can prey on large numbers of pests such as moths, leafhoppers and rice planthoppers. Keeping frogs in the field is like hiring a pest-control team that does not ask for wages.
Leave the frogs a way to survive, and pests become fewer instead
If you want tree frogs to settle in peace, you can start with a few small things: first, reduce chemical pesticides and switch to physical and biological methods such as insect-killing lamps, sex pheromone traps and sticky insect boards; when pesticide use is truly necessary, give priority to biopesticides with low toxicity to frogs, and avoid spraying in the evening when frogs are active; second, appropriately keep weeds and shrubs along field bunds and ditches to provide frogs with hiding and breeding space, and try to avoid cleaning ditches and draining water during the breeding season; third, use more decomposed organic fertilizer and less herbicide, which both nourishes the soil and preserves the aquatic plants at the field edges. These practices are not complicated; what matters is persistence.
The accounts of ecological farming are actually not a loss
Many farmers worry: if we spray less, what happens to yields and income? Judging from ecological farming practices in various places, pest numbers may indeed fluctuate somewhat in the early stage of transition, but after two or three years of persistence, populations of natural enemies in the field gradually recover, pests tend to stabilize instead, and spending on pesticides and chemical fertilizers genuinely drops. In addition, agricultural products with green or organic certification often sell at better prices, and various places also have support policies for ecological agriculture to differing degrees; the specific subsidy standards shall be subject to those published by the local agriculture and rural affairs departments. Taking everything into account, ecological farming is not necessarily worse off than farming based on pesticides.
When frog calls return to the field edges, it is both a signal that the environment has improved and a living hallmark of agricultural product quality. When farmers are willing to change their practices for a single tree frog, the tree frog will also repay the farmland with its insect-catching skills - this is exactly the new choice in which people and the land fulfill each other.