Prospects of Bamboo Cultivation in Garo Hills.

  Prospects of Bamboo Cultivation in Garo Hills
 
Bamboo is

crop of substantial importance and potential in Garo Hills as well as the North East General. The following are the few advantages put forth by the experts in order to promote livelihood activities of rural community: 


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  It attains maturity in less than five years since it is faster growing wood species.
  


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  It has positive environmental benefits – with a diverse root system, it has important implications for soil conservation and slope stability.
  


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  In India, plantation – scale cultivation of bamboo species is possible with standard practices.
  


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  It has the capacity to generate job opportunities. The production processes can be designed in such a away that the initial processing can be at level of the rural families. This will give them an opportunity to earn a steady, additional income. Final processing then could be at the small or medium scale enterprise level, but ownership could still be vested with the producers.
  


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  Many bamboo products can be made with low capital investments.
  


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  Bamboo is light-weight material, and does not need heavy machinery for felling and transportation.
  


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  Communities are usually familiar with handling bamboo and thus do not have to acquire new skills in order to supply processed bamboo to the industry.
  

There are numerous products that have potential. This indicative analysis looks at just one- the fabricating of bamboo into plyboard (plywood),. The potential for livelihood creation is significant with one plyboard fabrication unit supporting over 4,400 harvesters with an annual average of Rs. 15,000/-. The harvesters can be organized into 240 SHGs so as to capture economics of scale in business services delivery.
Given the total capital investment required to establish a plyboard fabrication facility, Rs. 1.6 crore, it is a feasible expectation that the 4400 suppliers could manage to own the fabrication facility. This would require an investment of Rs. 3,730 per supplier.
Cultivation Issues
            There are two management issues currently impacting bamboo cultivation in Meghalaya that need to be addressed prior to livelihood undertaking in this sub-sector. Vast areas of naturally occurring bamboo are available in the state including those on abandoned shifting cultivation sites, but these are being degraded due to mismanagement and unscientific harvesting. Second is the gregarious flowering of bamboo that is going to occur very soon (2004 – 2006). There is lack of systematic planning either in the state. Given the seriousness of these two issues, the project involvement in this sub-sector should focus its initial activities on bamboo by sensitizing GO/NGO and villagers on improved techniques of bamboo management through training sessions or workshops.
Certain strategies on initial bamboo pilots for several years should undertake specifically aiming at management of natural bamboo. The treatment plan in these pilots could include:
1.      cleaning of congested clumps to improve calm quality and growth;
2.      introduction of new, or economical species (e.g., balcooa bamboo), by planting;
3.      tending of the site to allow growth of calm/clump in linear direction to allow formation strips on shifting cultivation sites (the area between the strip could be taken up for cultivation of crops during shifting cultivation); and
4.      Testing various planting methods to find out the cheapest alternative (e.g. some species respond well to planting of stem cuttings). It will be important to mitigate the effects of gregarious bamboo flowering. 
Utilization of bamboo
The well improvised utilization of bamboo by: a) splitting/slivering, treating and storage of older bamboo culms for use in mat/ incense stick/ chiop stick industry; b) utilization of first year shoots for food industry – e.g., adding value by bamboo – pickle making, preservation of bamboo shoot for extended shelf life; and c) finding alternative usage of bamboo parts – e.g. seeds of Melocanna species is large and starchy which could be easily collected from the forest floor and used in the starch industry, etc.