Chhattisgarh Gives Agriculture Status To Lac Cultivation – Free PDF Download

• The Chhattisgarh government has decided to consider lac cultivation as an agriculture activity in the state and promote its farming as a livelihood option for farmers, particularly those living in remote and forest areas.

What is Lac?

• Lac is a scarlet-coloured resin secreted by an insect called ‘laccifer’ or ‘kerria lacca’ that makes its home on trees.
• The resin is scraped off from trees, dried and processed to form lac which is used in jewellery and leather industries

• The resinous substance is secreted by certain glands present in the abdomen of the female lac insects. 
• The coated branches of the host trees are cut and harvested.

Lac Culture

• These insects secrete a waxy resinthat is harvested and converted commercially into lac and shellac, used in various dyes, cosmetics, food glazes, wood finishing varnishes and polishes.
• Cultivation begins when a farmer gets a stick that contains eggs ready to hatch and ties it to the tree to be infested.
• Thousands of lac insects colonize the branches of the host trees and secrete the resinous pigment.

Chhattisgarh – the hub of Lac

• In Chhattisgarh Kusum, Palash & Ber trees are in abundance as a host plant, thus the cultivation of Lac is abundant.
• Two distinctive types of lac : Kusumi and Rangini based on types of host trees. While lac cultivated on the Palash tree is called Rangini, that cultivated on the Kusum tree is called Kusumi .
• Lac was harvested naturally from forests before the Industrial age. Now it is harvested commercially.
• The resin had limited usage in the adivasi life and were only used sparingly to seal pots and pans, but as soon as the industrial world discovered the rearing potential of the central Indian forests lac became a cash crop reared by the villagers.
• Lac as a resin became an economic lifeline for a significant number of forest dwelling communities as they historically started interacting with industrial modernity. 
• Lac rearing supplements the primary occupation of the forest dwellers as cultivators and also as rearers and gatherers of forest produces
• Most of the lac which is sold by the villagers at the local haats provides them with the necessary cash to hire hands for harvesting their crops.
• But due to lack of modern and systematic ways of farming, the farmers/lac cultivators  fail to fetch good profits against the investment.
• Chhattisgarh being one of the leading lac producing state in the country, annual production of lac is approx 4000 MT.
• Major lac producing districts in the state are Jagdalpur, Kanker, Mahasamund, Gariaband, Korea, Sarguja and Kabeerdham.

What benefit will arise from giving Lac cultivation the status of Agriculture?

• To make lac farming a profitable endeavour for cultivators, institutional support is required.
• To promote Lac farming as a livelihood option for farmers, particularly those living in remote and forest areas
• Once lac farming gets the status of agriculture, farmers associated with its production would be able to avail loans via co-operative societies, like other cultivators

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