By Mamy Ratsimbazafy | Director and Founder, SEPALIM
Overview of the last three months :
The best year (2022) of silk cocoon production by Ceranchia. Therefore, Filemona who is the group leader of the Bealanana villagers has done three cocoon deposits between May to September 2022. Those three cocoon deposits consisting of 122 kilos of raw cocoons in September. Our Bealanana farmers will reach the 150 kilo target for this year as Filemona plans to do one more deposit in December 2022. Fredo is one of the 20 villagers who collect cocoons for SEPALIM. Fredo, Filemona and two other member villagers carry all the group’s cocoons to Maroantsetra for sell to SEPALIM in 4 , 3 day trips per year.
After harvesting jobs, the villagers remove the pupae out of the cocoons and keep them alive until the moth emerge. Usually, the moth emerge in November and the rearing generation take 9 months. One household may harvest 6 to 10 kilos of raw cocoons per year. One kilo of raw cocoons consists of 3000 to 3500 pieces that SEPALIM purchases 24 US Dollar a kilo adding to 20 different family incomes
The Bealanana farmers have started using rearing nets to protect the moth against the predators, the same technique that SEPALIM farmers used to rear A. suraka around the Makira protected area. The nets allow farmer to monitor the egg-laying process. Most of the host plants are growing enough to be able to feed the larvae. Farmers do not need to go far to harvest the Ceranchia cocoons because their planted host plants are ready to produce a significant quantity of cocoon. This is very important because they do not need to search for the larvae pr travel through regions that are unsafe. Furthermore, they have some control over the number of cocoons the community can produce.
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