Online published on 29 March, 2016.
Indian economy is based on agriculture. About 70 per cent of the people totally depend on agriculture production, but the tribal dominated area which is surrounded by forest provides not only food, but also nutrition and livelihood option for the people. Lac (Kerria Lacca kerr.) is the natural resin produced in India since ancient time. It is a natural, bio-degradable, non-toxic, odourless, tasteless, hard resin and non-injurious to health. It is a natural resin secreted by an insect K. lacca (Kerr) which thrives on the tender twigs of specific host trees viz., palas (Butea monosperma), ber (Ziziphus mauritiana), kusum (Schleichera oleosa), Flemingia semialata, Ficus spp. Etc. Forest plays an important role in the lives of the people, providing food security and livelihood through the collection of minor forest produce, and employment (as casual labour) in the forest department and they produce lac in trees for their income generation. The national production of lac during year 2013 was 19, 577 tons out of which 3, 250 tons were produced by Chhattisgarh. Naresh and Narayanagowda (2000) indicated that extension contact was nonsignificantly related to the adoption level of improved sericulture practices. Lakshminarayan et al. (2008–09) revealed that sericulture scientists, sericulture extension officers and demonstrators were the first, second and third credible sources consulted by the sericulturists, respectively. The data was collected from randomly selected 160 lac growers of 8 villages of Jagdalpur block of Bastar district of Chhattisgarh state during the year 2012–2013 using well structured and pre-tested interview schedule. The study revealed that majority (86.88%) of the respondents had medium level of overall extension contact and more than 60 per cent of them had monthly contact with Forest department, while cent per cent of them had no contact with other extension agency such as panchayat. It was also found that a significant majority of the respondents had medium overall utilization of information sources and most of them used Forest department as a source of information where as cooperative society was never used as a source of information.
