Socio-Economic and Socio-Cultural Value of Highland bamboo (Yushania alpina) Plant and Its Contribution to Rural Livelihood in Banja District, Awi Zone Ethiopia

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Date

2017-08

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Bamboo forestry is being promoted to increase socio economic, socio cultural and also enhancing ecological benefits. The main reason of this study was to fill information gaps to characterize highland bamboo cultivating farmers’ knowledge and further promote the processing, utilization and marketing. The main objective of this study was to promote highland bamboo sociocultural and socio-economic use of bamboo plant, and its contribution to the livelihood the people in Banja district, Awie Zone, Amhara regional state, Ethiopia. Three sample kebeles were identified based on the distance to the main road. Accordingly, KEBELEs 4kms, between 4 and 8 kms, and further 8 kms away from the main road were selected. A total of 270 (31.2% of the bamboo growers) households participated in this study. The households were selected on the basis of their wealth status. Thus, rich, medium and poor wealth categories were represented. Data collection involved field observation to farm level bamboo inventory. Interviews, Focus group discussion and questionnaire were the ethnobotanical tools used in this study. Bamboo inventory was conducted on 81 selected HHs from those households used for survey. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Three type of highland bamboo farmers’ variety (TIKUR, KEY and ZEGER) were identified in the study area. The TIKUR farmers’ variety was dominantly growing in the study area. The trend of bamboo plantation and harvesting was increasing through time. Sample HHs harvest bamboo an age 2-5 years and 12% of respondents had a trend of processing bamboo culms in to different product types and most of them are found in proximal KEBELE (5.6%). Although bamboo is not the main income source to the society, it contributes about 7.2% of the total HH income. The households categorized under poor wealth status benefit (13.2%) better from bamboo than the rich (10.3%) and medium (8.7%) wealth status category of the community. Similarly, female headed HHs (12.5%) benefit higher than the male headed HHs (10%). From this study it is concluded that bamboo cultivators prefer the TIKUR farmers’ variety to plant than the KEY and ZEGER farmers’ variety. The expansion of bamboo plantation has been increasing over the last five years. Farmers living close to the main road have better experience of planting and managing bamboo, processing bamboo Culm to other products and have gained better bamboo income than distant KEBELEs. Key words:- Livelihood , processing, marketing, farmers’ variety, income generation

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Keywords

Livelihood, processing, marketing, farmers’ variety, income generation

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