Farmer's growing opportunity

Since signing a contract with QNUN, he sends over 500 kilograms of pumpkins to the university each month. What he has gained from the yield this year will be increased sevenfold.

In September, QNUN launched an online platform for its faculty and canteens to order fresh eggs, bottles of honey and vegetables via an app, which remarkably improved the procurement. The platform will be developed into a service network that supports a nationwide school-farm cooperation.

Thanks to the program, about 4,800 villagers in Pingtang county－1,691 of which are classified as impoverished－increased their annual incomes, on average, by 4,000 yuan last year.

Meanwhile, Guizhou University, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang University of Chinese Medicine and other colleges and schools in the province have also taken action to bring the vegetables produced in impoverished areas to the dining tables at their canteens at a cost of over 2.19 billion yuan since last September, according to Guizhou's department of education.

Additionally, professors and technicians were also dispatched by these universities to offer instructions and advice on remote villages' agricultural development.

Chen Zhuo, a professor who researches Plant Pathology at Guizhou University, started to help local farmers to raise frogs in wet rice fields in 2016.

"Plots of crops are scattered in the mountainous regions with a cold climate, which leads to a relatively low rice output," he explains. "Frogs can eat pests, and their excretions can serve as fertilizer, so frog breeding will save farmers' costs and boost the rice yields."

The frogs can also be sold to cities, where they are a popular ingredient. According to Chen, the output value of a single mu (0.067 hectares) of land will reach 14,000 yuan if 8,000 frogs are introduced.

Chen and his team are looking to help more people in the region by disseminating the technique to more than 20 counties in the province and training 4,000 local farmers.