The inaugural meeting of the Hunan Bamboo Industry Association was held on October 27. It announced that Hunan’s bamboo forest reached an area of 16.39 million mu (1,092,666 ha.), ranking second in the country.

Hunan’s 13 cities and one prefecture all have bamboo forests. Among them, Shaoyang (2.52 million mu or 168,000 ha.) and Yiyang (2.36 million mu, about 157,333 ha.) have a bamboo forest area of more than 2 million mu, about 133,333 ha. There are 10 key bamboo resource counties in Hunan with a bamboo forest area of more than 400,000 mu, or 26,666 ha. Taojiang, Suining, Anhua, and Taoyuan are the "hometowns of bamboo in China", and Yanling and Leiyang are "hometowns of featured bamboo in China."

In the past 10 years, the output value of the bamboo industry in Hunan has increased from more than 8 billion yuan in 2009 to 32.3 billion yuan in 2019. At present, a bamboo processing system with more than 1,500 varieties has been formed, and some products have taken the lead in domestic market. The domestic market share of bamboo mats is approximately 45%, that of reconsolidated bamboo is about 30%, and that of bamboo skateboards is 40%. Hunan’s disposable bamboo chopsticks, bamboo Western tableware, and bamboo handicrafts have been sold to Southeast Asia, Europe and America, with an annual export value of about 400 million USD. Eighteen forest parks in Hunan leverage bamboo forest resources to develop forest tourism, such as Taohuajiang Bamboo Sea, Heshan Baizhu Garden, Cailun Bamboo Sea, and Nanyue Bamboo Sea.

Hunan Provincial Forestry Bureau said that farmers can produce about 50 to 100 large-diameter bamboos per mu (about 0.07 ha.), 500-1000 kg of fresh bamboo shoots (spring bamboo shoots). And they may earn an income of 3,000 yuan per mu.

The Bureau urged the newly established association to promote the transformation and upgrading of Hunan’s bamboo industry, improve quality and efficiency of the sector, and assist in the building of a public brand of "Xiaoxiang Bamboo Products", so as to help bamboo farmers get rich and increase incomes.

This article is from Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Xiao Juan

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn