Contribution of bamboo industry to livelihood of local farmers in Tianlin County of Guangxi

The bamboo sector plays an im portant role in local economic development and the livelihood of farmers.Especially for some poverty stricken areas,development of the bamboo sector could be a good way to reduce poverty.Some forestry programmers such as logging ban,reforestation of hilly farming lands and ecological resettlements,and the forestry reform policies have brought great impacts on the farmer' forest based earning activities and their livelihoods that provide good opportunity to develop bamboo sector in Tianlin County.By now,bamboo sector become one of main industry in 1ocal economy. To assess the impact of bamboo sector we used a household survey with a stratified random sampling of two groups with five categories:local(non—migrant)households in three villages (rich,middle and poor)and migrants(1ocal migrants and other counties migrants).Thirty households were surveyed from each category,their current and recall data on income in terms of socio—economic characteristics were collected.This paper focused on the impact of bamboo sector on the farmer income from 1 995 to 2005 in Tianlin County.