Rattan husbandry and its potentiality for income generation in the village groves of floodplain area of Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper focuses on the husbandry of rattan, its processing, marketing and potentialities of raising the household income of the growers in the floodplain area of Bangladesh. The survey reveals that almost all the clumps (98%) are located in the pond and ditch site and around half of the clumps (48%) are found in the western site of the homesteads. Planting materials used for propagation are suckers and seeds, which are not bought from the market; rather, growers themselves supplied 72% from own source and the remaining 28% comes from neighbours and wildlings. All categorized growers, except the medium and large ones, tend the clumps where female and children were the majority (84%) of the labour force. All the growers, except the medium and large ones, are found to harvest rattan all the year round, while 82% of the growers maintain a three-year rotation. The contribution of rattan husbandry is on an average Tk. 1883 (about USD 32) per household per annum. It has been found that all of the landless and marginal growers (100%) market rattan by themselves, while all of the large category growers (100%) market rattan through middlemen.