Bamboo as food, fuel, and timber

Bamboo, hailed commonly as the "poor man's timber", has emerged as a money-spinner for farmers to get a rather fancy epithet "green gold".

Its cultivation with modern agronomic practices is proving more rewarding than many other crops, including the highly lucrative ones like sugarcane and cotton. Recognising its potential to increase farmers' income, the revamped National Bamboo Mission and the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture are implementing schemes to promote bamboo farming in different parts of the country.

Their programmes include measures to encourage the use of bamboo as an alternative to wood in various sectors, and build a value chain for producing, domestically marketing, and exporting bamboo and its products. The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog has projected the global bamboo market to be worth around $98.3 billion by 2025. India, being the world's second-largest bamboo producer, next to China, is striving for a sizable share of this booming market. The country has as many as 136 well-documented native species of bamboo and produces annually about 3.23 million tonnes of this highly valuable and versatile plant.