Ericulture (Sericulture practice of Eri silk) is timeless in the RiBhoi cluster. The Heritage of spinning yarn and weaving is an art that comes through generations, learned from their mothers and grandmothers in the villages of RiBhoi.
The sericulture practises in the cluster lost their interest in getting the cocoon and yarn; instead, they kept the practise alive largely to consume the pupa (the silkworm) as a protein source. The cash crop, which is the cocoon shell, becomes the by-product.
Various governmental departments invested significant amounts of money in reviving the cluster, but a gap was always there, which is to integrate the whole value chain, which can address the majority of the limitations and problems of the cluster and give a tailor-made solution to this art. The Ministry of Rural Development has funded, along with the Meghalaya State Rural Livelihood Society, to give to this cluster designed by FDRVC and MSRLS.
The value chain starts with a fundamental component, leaves of certain plants and silkworm eggs. As part of the producer company intervention, the community weavers are getting seeds of castor and kesuru (which systematically provide food leaves 4 to 5 times a year) to do plantations. The two central food leaves have different techniques of plantation and other periods of leaf harvesting. Proper training is given to the cluster. The next important thing is silkworm eggs. The community gets very few eggs and needs a mechanism to check their quality. Grainage is getting established to provide disease-free layings (DFLs), giving more cocoons than natural layings. The bottleneck of getting less number of leaves is getting addressed by this. The cash income will be increased by selling the cocoon shells to PE instead of selling it to local intermediaries or bartering it with different stakeholders.
With the yarn requirement, the community contacts an intermediary with a 30% to 50% margin to sell mill-spun yarns. With the need for cash, the community is reaching out to an intermediary to sell the hand-spun yarn, which is enjoying 35% to 45% of consumer spending, and the weavers get 45% to 55% of the consumer spending for the yarn. The PE provides widespread quality yarn (be it mill spun or another silk or cotton) and procures the hand-spun yarn from the community according to members' will in an entirely scientifically rate fixation mechanism. Moreover, the PE is arranging an end-to-end solution for getting more yarn by introducing mechanised spinning machines. The members will get training to work in the machines, get the machines in the small village-level spokes to work and at the end of work, they can sell the yarn to the PE for the right price.