Welcome back! Turns out, frogs are more than just farmed, they are also used in farming of other species! After looking at how frogs are farmed, I noticed an interesting term: integrated rice-frog farming. This is an example of agroecology, which is a method of sustainable agriculture that addresses unsustainable systems by using localised solutions.

Integrated rice-frog farming involves releasing frogs into rice paddies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of rice production. They do this by helping soil fertility and reducing the need for chemical fertilisers. Frogs are useful as acting as biological pest controllers as they can eat over 100 insects every night. By eating the pests that usually eat the rice plants, it can also increase rice yield. Although not mentioned in any of the papers I read, I would also think that the frogs could be harvested as a second source of income.

An issue which I foresee with this system is that it may unintentionally encourage the proliferation of invasive or non-native frogs. This paper I read only labelled the frogs as “immigrant frogs”, which implies they may not have been certain of the species introduced. Maybe for some reason a non-native frog species was found to be most effective in achieving these goals of low emmissions, and thus for efficiency’s sake, the non-native species was released into the rice paddies, which could disrupt the surrounding ecosystem if the frogs escape. (If this does happen, then it would be quite ironic, as the whole thing about agroecology is that farms are maintained as ecosystems).

If sufficient thought isn’t put into the amphibian species which is used for rice production, it can even lead to doing more harm than good for the crop itself. This paper highlights how although the invasive cane toad does not directly compete with the native Luzon wart frog for food (and thus isn’t counted as invasive), the toad eats benefitial arthropod predators which protect rice from pests.

Despite these worries, I do think the use of frogs as natural pest control should be expanded. Outside of agriculture, frogs could potentially help maintain the mosquito population and reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.

As climate change increases the risk of these vector-transmitted diseases and threatens food security, the notion of using frogs in agriculture becomes even more attractive. It is essential to rethink unsustainable agricultural practices and look into more ecologically sound methods, and frogs may be part of that answer.