Socio Economic Profile of Lac Growers in Mandla District of Madhya Pradesh, India

The study pertains to data collected from randomly selected 67 lac growers of 10 villages in Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh for the year 2020-2021. The study indicates that more than 80% lac growers in Mandla district are small, semi medium and medium farmers. Majority of farmers (34.32%) belong to middle age group followed by young age group (31.34%). The study revealed that 59.7% lac growers have family members up to 5-7 and educated up to middle school level (40.3%). The resources endowment in terms of the availability of host trees for lac cultivation varies from >25 to <200 trees. In terms of production maximum lac growers (38.81%) average production of 70.91 kg followed by 16.42% had average production 124.28 kg, 16.42% had 38.18 kg average production. Amongst the different source of income of lac growers, Agriculture crop ranked 1st (50.62%) followed by Lac crop (22.9%). Income of selected farmers from lac crop in the study 31.34% farmers earn between Rs. 10,001-20,000 followed by 23.88% farmers between 5001 to 10000 and 23.88% farmers get upto 5000, 10.45% farmers earn more than 40001, 7.46% earn Rs 20001-30000 and only 2.99% farmers get between Rs. 30,000-40,000 annually from lac production. In term of income sharing the maximum number of the farmers (32.84%) contributed 10-20% while only 11.94% farmers contributed more than 40% by lac. Implications of the present study will be helpful in strengthening the socio-economic condition of lac growers and lac marketing scenario of Madhya Pradesh.