Deep Roots

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Working with rural households to boost

livelihoods and resilience through bamboo farming

I.V. Ramanuja Rao, Senior Adviser, International Network for Bamboo and Rattan

and Chairman, Centre for Indian Bamboo Resource and Technology

he overarching importance of agriculture in rural

poverty underlines a paradoxical point: although

it is the source of livelihood for 76 per cent of

the world’s poorest people living in rural areas, it only

accounts for 5 per cent of the global gross domestic

product – 1.5 billion people in 500 million small farms.

Even this number is under increasing threat. Globally,

cropland represents around 1.53 billion hectares of

which 0.4-0.48 billion hectares is abandoned farmland.

The poorest farming households have only rain-fed lands

without any prospect of irrigation, and the highest risk of

crop failure. Unviable farming activity has pushed many

poor marginal/small farmers to abandon their farms and

move to slums in cities.

Climate change further compounds the inherent risk of

rain-fed agriculture by increasing the variability in rainfall

and temperature. The agricultural situation will become

progressively adverse for the poor who depend on rain-fed

land or other natural resources for subsistence and income.

On the other hand, the pressures of an ever-growing popu-

lation are leading to overcultivation, with land degradation

and deforestation increasing at an alarming rate. Additional

challenges to family farming include the perishable nature

of most food produce, rising input prices, rising expendi-

tures and low price realizations.

Typically, family farming is founded on land, water and

labour. Agricultural produce serves two important family

needs: food security and cash income. How does a family

cope when this gets disrupted? Assuming there is crop failure

due to drought, flood or fire, a rural household should have

adequate cash for purchasing the food it needs. How can they

generate cash? How can their resilience be enhanced?

The immediate imperatives are to generate rural jobs and

income opportunities at a large scale for poor rural house-

holds, increase their resilience, rehabilitate lands and make

them productive and economically viable, and enhance

permanent green cover, thereby making it possible to reduce

the impact of climate change on rural smallholder livelihoods

through mitigation and adaptation.

Given the scale of the need, solutions to address these

imperatives should be:

• household-centric

• land-based, capitalizing on an asset most rural poor

already have access to, and capable of application to most

soil conditions including degraded land

• natural resource-based, enabling people to grow a hardy

and preferably perennial crop that lends itself to year-round

harvest of the vegetative part as the economic output

• labour-based, enabling employment of large numbers

• climate independent and drought tolerant

• linked to market opportunities that offer the

corresponding scale, growth and income.

It is essential that the new value chains do not displace food

crops, and that they conserve and regenerate local and vulner-

able ecosystems and enhance agricultural productivity and

carbon sequestration.

Renewable bioenergy value chains of solid biofuels and

power are large biomass consumption markets that can

address the above challenges and imperatives. Both fuels and

power are in great demand; the limited supply results in crip-

pling shortages, especially in Africa and South Asia which

have most of the world’s poor. The robust renewable biomass

Biomass briquettes in India – solid biofuel pellets and briquettes can be

produced from any biomass

Image: K. Rathna, CIBART

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