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.

---

 learn more

Bamboo shoots

Bamboo shoots are a specialty vegetable. Demand is high among Chinese, Japanese and Thai people. Large fresh bamboo shoots, harvested properly, bring good prices. Photo is Shanghai #3, the third week of March 2024. The grove is 8 years old so is not yet producing full sized shoots and poles.

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.

---

 learn more

Livestock fodder

Livestock love to eat fresh bamboo leaves. Feeding livestock is a fine way to thin the groves a little at a time. Spread manure into the bamboo.

I have seen horses, cows, goats, sheep, llamas, rabbits, and chickens eat bamboo leaves.(Dogs eat the young shoots, not the leaves.) Deer do not browse on bamboo leaves (?!) although Dain Sansome in Oregon tells me deer rest at night in his groves.

---

 learn more