ECONOMICS OF SILK COCOON PRODUCTION IN DHARWAD DISTRICT
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Date
1996
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University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore
Abstract
Banking on the evolved Improved Sericultural Technology and aided by the World Bank and the Swias Government, the premier sericultural state of Karnataka, in 1980, embarked on the extension of sericulture into it's northern districts as well, projecting it as a venture capable of generating profitable, year-round employment under redused-moimture conditions.As the first part of studying the economics of sericulture in Dharwad, a northern Karnataka district, fifty established sericulturists of Shirahatti taluk which had the district’s highest mulberry area startir.g 1985, were sampled in July 1986. It .was observed that mulberry existed only as an irrigated, subsidiary crop completely integrated with cocoon production. An hectare produced 12.88 tonnes of leaf per annum from three crops against « regional potential of 4.2 crops, due to water shortage. 1,556 layings reared therefrom produced 435 kgs of cocoons utilizing 1,274 mandays of labour, 39 percent of which was from family. Hundred layings produced 28 kgs of cocoon feeding 847 kga of leaf, in the face of rearing equipment shortage, diseases and uzi menace- Cobb-DougIa3 type regression function results favoured increasing the gross mulberry hecterage and operational rearing costs. Cocoon production required Rs.25,227 and included Ra.694, the value of free chawki input from Sericulture Department. A profit of Rs.660 was realised by cocoons sold at Rs.56 per kilogram.The concluding, second part of the ^-tudy was conducted in May 1995. Appropos 80 percent of the sample farmers had discontinued, the taluk having lost 76 percent of it's mulberry area. Problems related to rearing, management and labour, profitability accounted for 50,24 and 11 percentproportions ofprecipitatingreasonstherefor.Disontinuations peaked around 1987 due to uaifly and around 1991 due to pebrine-caused layings shortage and low cocoon price. The sample’s decadal performance indicated annual cocoon yield to be 431 kgs and extrapolated leaf yield to be 14.93 tonnes and thus couldn’t replicate the performances of southern Karnataka and the State’s potential. Insufficient, technology, incompetent layings supply, indifferent market policy coupled with sub-nonual annual rainfalls an ? irrigation-water shortage had undermined the earlier sericultural area and grass-root effort in the region.A 1994-95 case-study of an adequately-irrigated, shoot rearing farm demonstrated 842 kgs of cocoon produce per hectare from four crops, selling at Rs.122 per kg. and profitting byRe.47,660 per annum.
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