Socio-economic And Socio-cultural Value Of Highland Bamboo (yushania Alpina) Plant And Its Contribution To Rural Livelihood In Banja District Awi Zone Ethiopia

Bamboo forestry is being promoted to increase socio economic, socio cultural and alsornenhancing ecological benefits. The main reason of this study was to fill information gapsrnto characterize highland bamboo cultivating farmers’ knowledge and further promote thernprocessing, utilization and marketing. The main objective of this study was to promoternhighland bamboo sociocultural and socio-economic use of bamboo plant, and itsrncontribution to the livelihood the people in Banja district, Awie Zone, Amhara regionalrnstate, Ethiopia. Three sample kebeles were identified based on the distance to the mainrnroad. Accordingly, KEBELEs 4kms, between 4 and 8 kms, and further 8 kms away from thernmain road were selected. A total of 270 (31.2% of the bamboo growers) householdsrnparticipated in this study. The households were selected on the basis of their wealthrnstatus. Thus, rich, medium and poor wealth categories were represented. Data collectionrninvolved field observation to farm level bamboo inventory. Interviews, Focus grouprndiscussion and questionnaire were the ethnobotanical tools used in this study. Bamboorninventory was conducted on 81 selected HHs from those households used for survey.rnDescriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Three type of highland bamboornfarmers’ variety (TIKUR, KEY and ZEGER) were identified in the study area. The TIKURrnfarmers’ variety was dominantly growing in the study area. The trend of bamboornplantation and harvesting was increasing through time. Sample HHs harvest bamboo anrnage 2-5 years and 12% of respondents had a trend of processing bamboo culms in torndifferent product types and most of them are found in proximal KEBELE (5.6%). Althoughrnbamboo is not the main income source to the society, it contributes about 7.2% of therntotal HH income. The households categorized under poor wealth status benefit (13.2%)rnbetter from bamboo than the rich (10.3%) and medium (8.7%) wealth status category ofrnthe community. Similarly, female headed HHs (12.5%) benefit higher than the malernheaded HHs (10%). From this study it is concluded that bamboo cultivators prefer thernTIKUR farmers’ variety to plant than the KEY and ZEGER farmers’ variety. The expansionrnof bamboo plantation has been increasing over the last five years. Farmers living close tornthe main road have better experience of planting and managing bamboo, processingrnbamboo Culm to other products and have gained better bamboo income than distantrnKEBELEs.rnKey words:- Livelihood , processing, marketing, farmers’ variety, income generation

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