They say whatever you sow, you will reap. As true as this is to plants, in sericulture, chawkis are the crucial elements through which farmers reap good cocoons. Chawki refers to the young silk worms reared from hatching to 2nd moult stage. Chawki rearing is the process of raising juvenile silkworms in a controlled environment. The establishment of a nursery for horticulture and plantation crops can be related to the process of chawki rearing. Chawki rearing aims to produce high-quality silkworms in a disease-free environment, cut costs, and shorten the time taken by farmers to rear silkworms, and enhance cocoon quality and output.
Given the importance of chawkis, from where can a sericulturist procure them?
Farmers generally used to procure silkworm eggs from grain ages and incubate the eggs and grow the worms in their dwelling houses or in the silkworm rearing houses. Chawki, being at a vulnerable stage, requires perfect hygiene and a suitable micro-climate. Quite often, the farmers cannot provide the required care and environment, which leads to improper hatching, unhealthy young worms, and ultimately poor cocoon yields and returns. However, with the advent of CRCs, this is a problem of a bygone era.
CRC: Chawki Rearing Centers
CRCs facilitate the purchase of healthy chawki worms by farmers. At CRCs, eggs are reared up to the 2nd instar -10 day cycle. By procuring these chawkis, farmers can effectively save nine days’ of labour and from the meticulous task of incubation, brushing, and young age rearing. By using the worms supplied by CRC, farmers can reap up to a 25% cocoon yield. Apart from this, CRCs also promote batch rearing among the farmers, and help them increase the number of crops per year for more profitable returns.
Advantages of CRCs
- CRCs produce uniform and healthy silkworm larvae.
- CRCs reduce the chance of contamination and spread of diseases.
- CRCs facilitate proper incubation of eggs that leads to good hatching.
- CRCs reduce the missing percentage of larvae and hence increase the crop yield.
ReshaMandi Empowering CRC Owners
CRCs are one of the important stakeholders in the silk supply chain. They have the enormous responsibility of providing chawkis to millions of seri farmers so that they can reap good cocoons. There are around 1,1,29 registered and 2,000 unregistered entities. ReshaMandi associates with CRCs across India and helps them improve their businesses and profits. Partnering with ReshaMandi provides a myriad of benefits for the CRCs.
- Having a disloyal customer base deeply impacts the income of CRC owners. By enrolling with ReshaMandi, CRCs can effectively connect with a huge farmer base. This will increase the reach of their product.Through ReshaMandi, they can cater to the chawki needs of 50,000+farmers. Apart from creating a positive impact on their businesses, this association will also create avenues for enhanced incomes.
- ReshaMandi also provides critical logistical support to CRC owners in delivering chawkis to a large number of seri farmers.
- By associating with ReshaMandi, CRC owners can have multiple avenues to enhance their income. They can sell chawkis to ReshaMandi and avail of several special offers, bonuses, and also value-added benefits.
- Inability to detect diseases affecting the silk worms during rearing and lack of technical support are the two major bottlenecks hampering the business of CRC owners. However, through ReshaMandi’s technovations, CRC owners can now bid goodbye to these problems. CRC owners can ensure negligible crop failures and maximum yields by accessing ReshaMandi’s IoT devices. By installing the IoT devices, CRC owners receive prompts via SMS for moisture, humidity, and several other parameters that affect silkworm growth in rearing sheds.
ReshaMandi is India’s first and largest ecosystem for the natural silk supply chain. It has undoubtedly become the crusader of the stakeholders in the natural fibre ecosystem by resolving the problems faced by them. Apart from creating hassle-free processes for them, it is leaving no stone unturned in empowering the farmers, chawki rearing centre owners, reelers, weavers and retailers.
