Study of Socio-economic Factors and its impact on Cocoon Productivity in Jammu Region

Sericulture is an agro-cottage, forest based industry, labor intensive and commercially attractive economic activity falling under the cottage and small-scale sector. The silk is the final product of this industry. It particularly suits to rural population working with agriculture, entrepreneurs and artisans as it requires low investment with potential for relatively higher returns. It provides income and employment to the rural poor especially, farmers with small landholding and marginalized and weaker sections of the society. An interview schedule was administrated during MarchApril 2019-20 in three districts viz., Ramban, Doda and Kishtwar of Jammu division to collect preliminary data on socio-economic profile of the silkworm rearers. The survey revealed that the average age was 43.49±0.71 years and family size ranged from 5.52 in Kishtwar to 6.78 in Ramban district. The average schooling of the respondent farmers was 1.61±0.15 years. The average land holding in the three districts was around 0.34±0.02 ha and area under mulberry cultivation was 0.04±0.004 ha with an average of 37.89 trees. The average experience possessed by sericulture farmers was 13 years. Step wise multiple regression analysis was applied to identify the socio-economic factors affecting cocoon productivity and the results revealed that socio-economic factors namely education, total land holdings, area under mulberry plantation and number of mulberry trees have positive and significant while factors namely distance from nearest sericulture office, cocoon market and transportation charges have negative but highly significant effect on cocoon productivity and were found to decrease cocoon production with a unit increase of their value. Other factors namely age, number of family members and experience were recorded non-significant.