ASSESSING THE CONTRIBUTION OF BAMBOO PRODUCTS ON THE SMALLHOLDER FARMERS INCOME GENERATION: A CASE OF ASSOSA WOREDA, BENISHANGUL GUMUZ REGIONAL STATE, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Oxythenathera Abyssinica Known as low Land Bamboo is a perennial, multipurpose and a fast growing plant that supports local livelihoods in many ways. However, for long its uses have been limited to traditional applications. Although bamboo has quit high distribution and widely utilized by large number of local communities in Ethiopia, little baseline information on its livelihood support and domestic status exist for several areas. The purpose of this study was to study or to know the current level of bamboo and bamboo product contribution on the life of rural household in Assosa woreda Benishangul gumuz region. The interest to begin this research was to ensure that this baseline information was available for documentation of local use and economic benefit from bamboo trade is necessary to understand the opportunities and constraints to bamboo harvesting, and how economically vulnerable these households. The major sources of data for the study were 154 Female and Male house hold head of Abrhamo and Abendem Engda kebele community member. The researcher used descriptive research method to present facts. In addition, both primary and secondary data were collected from various sources using different techniques. The collected data were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. To this end, questionnaire and interview methods of data collection were employed. Thus, the collected data were tabulated, presented and analyzed by using SPSS descriptive and inferential analysis were used to interpret the data. The study identified that Bamboo was one of the major income source on the life of representative household on the target kebeles especially because the access they have the nearby bamboo forest and the subsistence crop production and agriculture production/and also the contribution of the bamboo products for the household life were differentiate from household to household through their age composition and the available productive household member within household and related key matters etc. To add, the sustainability of bamboo products in Assosa woreda were affected with many challenges .These were; the x extreme exploitation, wild fire, lack of sufficient training about bamboo plantation technique of the sustainable utilization of bamboo harvesting technique which include storage and handling , lack of proper market linkage which lead them to sell their bamboo with low-priced which attributed to the middle man role instead of the primary household and inadequate support from stakeholders Furthermore, based on the major findings and conclusions, recommendations were made as it needs training, support on different modern technologies, support from NGOs and Government for the household and strong institutional linkage with concerned bodies to provide bamboo products for local consumption and for export market purpose. .