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Like agriculture, technological breakthrough took place in Indian sericulture after 1990s. The introduction of high yielding mulberry varieties such as V1 and S36 and silkworm races like CSR2 x CSR4 (bivoltine hybrids) and PM x CSR2 (crossbreed) have had a greater impact on productivity and quality of silk cocoon. This has helped to produce international grade silks (2A and 4A). Gobichettipalayam of Erode District and Udumalpet of Coimbatore District are the major bivoltine cocoon producing clusters in the State of Tamil Nadu. An attempt has been made in this paper to find out the impact of new technologies on income from sericulture. A field study was performed to estimate the costs and returns of two groups of farmers, viz., Group 1 (technology adopters) and Group 2 (technology non-adopters). The cost and benefit ratios were estimated to be 1:1.73 and 1:1.63 for Groups 1 and 2 farmers respectively. In general, in both the regions, the farmers possess entrepreneurial attitude and risk-taking nature. Moreover, returns from sericulture are higher than those of other agricultural crops. To overcome the major problems of marketing of cocoon and price instability, suitable policy measures, such as minimum support price for commercial cocoons is to be fixed in order to promote bivoltine cocoon production in the study regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural insurance is indispensable for the prosperity of farmers and policy instruments to deal with the perils present in agriculture. But the implementation of agriculture insurance largely depends on the farmers' attitude. This study assesses and tests the attitude of respondents toward agriculture insurance, and favorable factors and problems prevailing in implementing agriculture insurance. Sixty farmers were interviewed between April 2008 and August 2008. The farmers were selected by adopting convenient random sampling method. The collected data were analyzed with the help of percentage analysis and sign test. The study reveals that the farmers have good attitude toward agriculture insurance. Besides, they accept that certain favorable factors and stumbling blocks are prevalent in implementing agriculture insurance in Ambasamudram area. On the basis of the findings, the study suggests certain mechanism to boost up the share of agricultural income of Ambasamudram area at all levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]