No abstract

A total of 75 farmers were selected from the four sericulturally important districts viz., Kupwara, Baramulla, Budgam and Pulwama of Kashmir valley (India) to study the impact of mass media exposure and changing proneness on the cocoon marketing and cocoon production. Results of study indicated that 58.67 per cent of the respondents had low exposure to mass media, while 34 per cent of them had medium level exposure and only 7.33 per cent enjoyed high level exposure. Change proneness status of stakeholders revealed that overall 50 per cent of respondents belonged to medium category of change proneness; this was followed by low category (42%) and high category (8%) respectively. With respect to marketing, 67.67 percent of the studied farmers complained about delayed marketing and only 26 per cent of them were satisfied with present marketing operations. Although 51 per cent of the farmers expressed that markets were established in the vicinity of district headquarters, yet 49 per cent were not satisfied with the location of market. Furthermore 90.67 per cent of beneficiaries expressed their displeasure over the competitiveness of marketing and as a result of poor marketing, while 77.67 percent of the rearers expressed that they were not getting remunerative prices for the final produce. On cocoon production side, majority of respondents (72%) fall into low category whereas 22.33 and 5.67 percent of them were reported in medium and high category of cocoon production respectively. The cocoon productivity figures also revealed that 30.33 percent of respondents of study area harvested 6-31 kg of green cocoons/ounce of silkworm seed, while 61% percent harvested 31.56 kg/ounce whereas only 8.67 per cent of them harvested 56-81 kg of cocoons/ounce of seed.