foxd wrote:
This is a chicken and the egg type problem, the demand isn't there because the supply isn't there. Does anybody know of a US based industry that imports bamboo poles?
....I'm sure they exist I just don't know of any off the top of my head.
foxd wrote: On what do you base the 10 acre figure?
....Just a figure I pulled out of thin air....I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to that question, there are too many variables to take into consideration...but 10 acres would be a good start.
foxd wrote:Are there figures somewhere??
........Harry Simmons with the American Bamboo society - Texas chapter has done LOTS of business models and research with bamboo....Not sure where the figures are but I'm sure you can contact him for further info.....His finding were not encouraging but that goes back to the fact that competing with the Chinese would be difficult...plus labor rates.
With that said, let me refer back to my earlier point.....Things are changing in this country...people are falling on hard times and the unemployment rate is climbing FAST....The current Administration and Congress are passing out grants left and right trying to FORCE a paradigm shift when it comes to Agriculture and "going Green".....Bamboo will get it's day in the spotlight and that day is coming soon.....I would LOVE to see the American Bamboo Society use it's 501c not-for-profit status to acquire some of these Grants and Kick-off the upcoming bamboo revolution!!!!!....It's the perfect time to get the ball rolling. We all need to push for this.
I know of very large supplies of bamboo poles. Most bamboo plantations here just burn them. Seriously. There is supply. There is zero market. Well, I take that back. There is a small market. Most of the forestry supply places (ie., Terra Tec in Eugene) sell them by the bag lots for using with tree saver 'tubes'. They are from China, Indochina and Indosesia, and they are dirt cheap. We also use bamboo poles on the ski patrol on Mt Hood. There is also a market for bamboo poles in the nursery trade, and for planting vineyards. I used my own Phy. aurea poles when I planted my pinot noir vineyard a few years ago. But these are pretty small markets. As mentioned above good luck competing with Asia, and particularly China on marketing bamboo products. Bamboo poles are CHEAP.
As for species and budgets, the state university of WA and University of WA are giving a presentation on bamboo agroforestry at the ABS annual conference in Tacoma, WA in October. There will also be genetic research presentations from the University of Iowa, and a field trip to the reasearch bamboo groves at WA State University, Payallup. This very topic is the theme of this year's boo conference. Sustainable, green bamboo agroforestry and culture. Its Oct. 1-4.
After much browsing it looks like the two types of bamboo canes being sold are Moso and Tonkin Cane. Would River Cane would be a good replacement for Tonkin Cane?
I have found several bamboo pole suppliers in the UK and their prices are in the range of $2 per pound and high for smaller quantities. There must be a demand otherwise there wouldn't be several importers of bamboo poles.
Now they import the bamboo canes by the container load from China and Africa. So would it come down to a matter of being able to produce and deliver a container load locally for less than the cost of buying and importing a container load?
The legal issues that will arise when the undead walk the earth are legion, and addressing them all is well beyond what could reasonably be accomplished in this brief Essay. Indeed, a complete treatment of the tax issues alone would require several volumes.
ShmuBamboo wrote:I know of very large supplies of bamboo poles. Most bamboo plantations here just burn them. Seriously. There is supply. There is zero market. Well, I take that back. There is a small market.
Has anyone considered there might be a market for bamboo biochar and bamboo mulch?
The legal issues that will arise when the undead walk the earth are legion, and addressing them all is well beyond what could reasonably be accomplished in this brief Essay. Indeed, a complete treatment of the tax issues alone would require several volumes.
ShmuBamboo wrote:I know of very large supplies of bamboo poles. Most bamboo plantations here just burn them. Seriously. There is supply. There is zero market. Well, I take that back. There is a small market.
Has anyone considered there might be a market for bamboo biochar and bamboo mulch?
People are FREAKING OUT about the Mulch industry wiping out the old Cypress stumps in the Lousiana swamp....I can't say I blame them...The Industry is wiping out these beautiful Cypress Swamps.
It's a Great Idea to substitute bamboo for Cypress mulch....Just another Link in the chain for bamboo to become a success in this country.
Mulch around here is cheap or free. I get chipper mulch for free for my bamboos, all I want. I have mountains of the stuff in back now. I chip bamboo for people as well, along with tree limbs and the like. Bamboo mulch is good for silica in bamboo groves. But few of us here are all that interested in it, really.
As for the poles, yes, you would have to be able to supply the poles at about half the retail price in order to sell them to local distributors and stores. In some cases it is impossible to sell them to stores, because of kickbacks and contracts. For example, I tried to make charcoal and sell it locally a few years ago. Turns out that Kingsford has a national monopoly on charcoal, and they will do anything and everything to drive away any and all competition, including paying stores kickbacks and/or giving stores huge discounts to undercut any competiion for as long as the competition is around. It is really really hard to get any space on store or warehouse shelves.
Last edited by ShmuBamboo on Thu Jul 16, 2009 12:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Found a book in my brother's bamboo book collection called, "Bamboo on the Farm" by Daphne Lewis/Bamboo Gardens of Seattle, WA. Dated 1993. It is a fairly thin book. Has a basic run-down on mostly common Phyllostachys species, the potential for improved farms using bamboo plantings, and some of the potential markets for bamboo products, like shoots, poles, and nursery plants. They alos have a section on errosion control and stream plantings. If anything, in Oregon of late people are pulling bamboo out of streams and banks, as they are not native to the PNW. I have gotten quite a few free bamboo plants and all the poles that I could possible want from people here along the rivers removing bamboo groves to improve native habitat. Seems that the wetlands people are for erradication of bamboo.
The book also has a cost comparison analysis of bamboo vs. filbert (hazlenut) orchard production. Hazelnuts here are a high income farm product, and demand is high. They are also getting a disease that is causing hazelnut blight that is requiring that they be replanted with new resistant trees. I have some friends that are just letting their hazelnut orchards go, and they will replace them with grapes. My personal experience growing grapes is that grapes would be better, at $4,000 gross per acre vs $2,000 an acre from bamboo (if there was a market for product at the estimated $1 per pound). The real limiting factor here is water though, and you can dry farm grapes once they are established, whereas you would have to irrigate bamboo (and hazelnuts). I have been looking at acreage here for over a year now, and it is nearly impossible to find anything cheap that has water rights or a well that has more than a few gallons per minute capacity. If I cannot find a place to grow grapes, I do not see how I could find one to grow bamboo. Or a mix of the two, as I had palnned to do on the sheep ranch that I lived on.
The big factor other than a missing market in these bamboo farming estimates is labor. Agricultural labor here is scarce, and many of the berry farms and vineyards here are not being picked for lack of labor. I do not see being able to hire anything but illegal latino labor here that would be able and willing to plant, tend, and harvest bamboo. Most of the bamboo nurseries here hire Spanish Speaking labor, and I am willing to bet that a large majority of them are not here legally. If I owned a bamboo plantaition, I woud refuse to hire illegal labor, and I am sure that I would suffer on the bottom line as a result. I am not a fan of importing cheap labor, nor do I support the illegal labor pool that is here now. As a matter of fact, I spend quite a lot of time lobbying against it. I picked berries here when I was a kid. Actially, I picked berries, beans, cheries, whatever. That's the way that it was here when I ws a kid. Now you cannot get kids off their duffs to do much, and there are labor laws in place here now that restrict kids from working in the fields. Its like they set it up for importing cheap illegal labor. Gee, who would have thunk that? Large multinational agricultural and industrial corporations, maybe? Sigh...
Anyway, there are a lot of barriers out there to overcome to get a bamboo industry rolling in America. The ideas have been out there and they get some push about every ten years or so, but nothing seems to come of it. Unlike vineyards here, where some California grape growers moved up here and planted grapes, and now after about 30 years they are doing OK. Its is still a hard life being an vineyard owner though. I own a half acre vineyard msyelf, and even that small a vineyard is a lot of work. It produces enough grapes (one ton a year) to get wineries interested. We have a buyer though, and did before I planted the grapes. Labor is not a huge issue with a plot that small. I can pick them myself in a few days. I planted it as a test for a much larger planting, 10-20 acres more to become more productive. The installation costs are high, and deer fencing is expensive, as are trellis systems and pruning and watering systems, and spraying. Also the labor. Bamboo would be far easier to establish, but again, when it is time to harvest, who is going to cut and truck and buy the bamboo? I do not see any ads in the Capital Press for bamboo wanted.
Shmu...regarding Illegal Immigration, I hear ya and I Agree.....this Graphic sums it up well:
As for the folks ripping the Bamboo up near waterways, I find that Ironic...especially when Bamboo is the BEST filter for stuff you DON'T want to get into the waterways. Runoff is destroying ALOT of our waterways and creating DEADZONES in the water.....this is killing fish by the thousands!!!!....it's also killing the fishing industry.
What these people don't realize is, THEY NEED TO PLANT MORE BAMBOO ALONG THE WATERWAYS!!!!!!....
I'm not trying to turn this into a political discussion, I was just agreeing with another post.
But I do see Illegal Immigration and the Cheap Labor that goes with it, an Obstacle to the bamboo market.....some people see Cheap Labor as an advantage and I see their point, but I see Illegal Immigrants as just that...ILLEGAL
It's time to STOP picking and choosing which laws will be enforced and which laws will be overlooked because it fattens somebody's wallet.
I'm not trying to turn this into a political discussion, I was just agreeing with another post.
But I do see Illegal Immigration and the Cheap Labor that goes with it, an Obstacle to the bamboo market.....some people see Cheap Labor as an advantage and I see their point, but I see Illegal Immigrants as just that...ILLEGAL
It's time to STOP picking and choosing which laws will be enforced and which laws will be overlooked because it fattens somebody's wallet.
My guess is that the first Europeans here did not arrive with green cards and follow the proper indigenous people's immigration protocols so if the REAL Americans want their country back most of us had best start packing up our things.
I'm not trying to turn this into a political discussion, I was just agreeing with another post.
But I do see Illegal Immigration and the Cheap Labor that goes with it, an Obstacle to the bamboo market.....some people see Cheap Labor as an advantage and I see their point, but I see Illegal Immigrants as just that...ILLEGAL
It's time to STOP picking and choosing which laws will be enforced and which laws will be overlooked because it fattens somebody's wallet.
My guess is that the first Europeans here did not arrive with green cards and follow the proper indigenous people's immigration protocols so if the REAL Americans want their country back most of us had best start packing up our things.
In the Grand Scheme of things you are Correct....None of us belong here if we don't have Native American Blood.....
It's funny when you see all these people screaming about bamboo not being a Native Species, but yet they themselves aren't a Native species either....LOL....kinda Ironic......ya see how I just got us back on topic????.....
ShmuBamboo wrote:I know of very large supplies of bamboo poles. Most bamboo plantations here just burn them. Seriously. There is supply. There is zero market. Well, I take that back. There is a small market. Most of the forestry supply places (ie., Terra Tec in Eugene) sell them by the bag lots for using with tree saver 'tubes'. They are from China, Indochina and Indosesia, and they are dirt cheap. We also use bamboo poles on the ski patrol on Mt Hood. There is also a market for bamboo poles in the nursery trade, and for planting vineyards. I used my own Phy. aurea poles when I planted my pinot noir vineyard a few years ago. But these are pretty small markets. As mentioned above good luck competing with Asia, and particularly China on marketing bamboo products. Bamboo poles are CHEAP.
As for species and budgets, the state university of WA and University of WA are giving a presentation on bamboo agroforestry at the ABS annual conference in Tacoma, WA in October. There will also be genetic research presentations from the University of Iowa, and a field trip to the reasearch bamboo groves at WA State University, Payallup. This very topic is the theme of this year's boo conference. Sustainable, green bamboo agroforestry and culture. Its Oct. 1-4.
I have sold hundreds of Ps. japonica poles this summer so far, advertising them on Craigslist, and have been getting $1.00 each. I would say there is a pretty good market, as I have sold all I could harvest.
Yeah, first year for it... I have two large groves now that I "adopted"... one of them was a rampant, unkept mess, I stopped by to see if the owner would let me dig a few divisions out of the ditch next to the road. When I knocked on the door, a little old lady tottered out, and after hearing I wanted to dig up some bamboo, she thought I was just the nicest .
Since they are not capable of caring for it any more, and I can use the divisions, as well as the poles, it works great for both of us. This spring I sold a couple hundred japonica divisions, as well as put in about 100' of them along my fenceline near a roadway. Digging divisons is not easy, nor is cutting poles. I dont see it being a large scale commercial thing, but I think small business, run by an enterprising person can do well with it, especially if you are already getting part of your income from some other form of agriculture. I dont think I could manage it as well if I had an office job and had to be somewhere 9-5 every day, then go out and try to deal with the plants too....
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