Bamboo poles

 In the US in 2024, serious people are working to create an industrial market for US grown bamboo poles. See National Bamboo. While you wait for a US bamboo industry that will buy your poles in bulk, create your own bamboo products and market. Sell green poles for weddings and festivals. Sell dried poles for fences, sheds, and art. Sell bamboo chips for mulch and animal bedding. Make livestock feed pellets from branches and leaves. Sell bamboo charcoal for grilling or biochar. Dry leaves and make tea.

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Bamboo shoots

Bamboo shoots are a specialty vegetable. Demand is high among Chinese, Japanese and SE Asian people. Large fresh bamboo shoots, harvested properly, bring good prices. Photo shows moso shoots from ten year old grove.

Some farmers sell shoots at urban farmers markets and to high end Japanese restaurants; others supply local asian grocers. I sell shoots mail order by using USPS Priority FlatRate boxes. Florida Grown Specialties, Inc. is planting tissue cultured Dendrocalamus asper. Its shoot processing facility is ready to receive and sell the expected shoots.

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Livestock fodder

Livestock love to eat fresh bamboo leaves. Feeding livestock is a fine way to thin the groves a little at a time. Spreading their manure into the groves is routine for me.. I have seen horses, cows, goats, sheep, llamas, rabbits, and chickens eat bamboo leaves. Wild pigs eat the shoots; leave the sheath leaves. Deer do not browse on bamboo leaves (?!) although Dain Sansome in Oregon tells me deer rest at night in his groves.

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