Bamboo forestry (also known as bamboo farming, cultivation, agriculture or agroforestry) is a cultivation and raw material industry that provides the raw materials for the broader

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial plant, perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily (biology), subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in th ...

industry, worth over 72 billion dollars globally in 2019. Historically a dominant raw material in South and South East Asia, the global bamboo industry has significantly grown in recent decades in part because of the high sustainability of bamboo as compared to other biomass cultivation strategies, such as traditional timber

forestry Forestry is the science and craft of creating, managing, planting, using, conserving and repairing forests and woodlands for associated resources for human and Natural environment, environmental benefits. Forestry is practiced in plantations and ...

. For example, as of 2016, the U.S. Fiber corporation Resource Fiber is contracting farmers in the United States for bamboo cultivation. Or in 2009,

United Nations Industrial Development Organization The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) (French: Organisation des Nations unies pour le développement industriel; French/Spanish acronym: ONUDI) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that assists countries in e ...

published guidelines for cultivation of bamboo in semi-arid climates in Ethiopia and Kenya. Because bamboo can grow on otherwise

marginal land Marginal land is land that is of little agricultural or developmental value because crops produced from the area would be worth less than any rent paid for access to the area. Although the term ''marginal (disambiguation)#Economics, marginal'' is o ...

, bamboo can be profitably cultivated in many degraded lands. Moreover, because of the rapid growth, bamboo is an effective

climate change mitigation Climate change mitigation (or decarbonisation) is action to limit the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that cause climate change. Climate change mitigation actions include energy conservation, conserving energy and Fossil fuel phase-out, repl ...

and

carbon sequestration Carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon in a carbon pool. It plays a crucial role in Climate change mitigation, limiting climate change by reducing the amount of Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, carbon dioxide in the atmosphe ...

crop, absorbing between 100 and 400 tonnes of carbon per hectare (). In 1997, an international intergovernmental organization was established to promote the development of bamboo cultivation, the International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation. Bamboo is harvested from both cultivated and wild stands, and some of the larger bamboos, particularly species in the genus ''

Phyllostachys ''Phyllostachys'' ( is a genus of Asian bamboo in the grass family. Many of the species are found in central and southern China, with a few species in northern Indochina and in the Himalayas. Some of the species have become naturalized in part ...

'', are known as "timber bamboos". Bamboo is typically harvested as a source material for construction, food, crafts and other manufactured goods. Bamboo cultivation in South, South East Asia and East Asia stretches back thousands of years. One practice, in South Korea, has been designated as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems.

References

Bamboo {{Bamboo-stub