'Look for sustainability, adopt bamboo cultivation': Maharashtra minister Bharat Gogawale tells farmers

Mumbai: At a time when Maharashtra is staring at one of its worst-ever droughts, Employment Guarantee Minister Bharat Sheth Gogawale on Sunday asked farmers to look at sustainability and adopt bamboo cultivation to address climate change and ensure livelihoods simultaneously.

According to him, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has made bamboo one of the focus areas to drive India’s rural economy.

“When a storm comes, bamboo bends but does not break. Once the storm passes, it stands tall again. The farmers of Maharashtra are just like bamboo. Whether it is drought, excessive rainfall or landslides, they have bent under the pressure but have never broken. Today, we are placing a means of prosperity in the hands of these farmers in the form of bamboo,” said Gogawale, who is also the Horticulture Minister.

Addressing the Bamboo Economy & Sustainability Summit in Mumbai, Gogawale said that bamboo has been a long-standing companion of rural life.

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“Yet, for years, we continued to call it the 'poor man's timber'… Today, the same bamboo is emerging in global markets as ‘green gold’,” he said, adding that the transformation has not happened by accident.

“In 2017, the Union Government amended the Indian Forest Act and excluded bamboo grown outside forests from the definition of a tree. The law recognised that bamboo is grass, not a tree. That single decision freed bamboo grown on farmers' field boundaries from the web of permits and restrictions, truly turning it into an agricultural crop,” he said.

Gogawale said that bamboo is a common thread between the Horticulture and Employment Guarantee portfolios.

“Under EGS, a farmer cultivating bamboo can receive assistance of approximately Rs 7 lakh per hectare over three years, from planting to nurturing the crop. This means farmers earn wages by working on their own land, while the same effort helps establish a farming activity that can generate income for the next 30 to 40 years. Once planted, bamboo yields a harvest every year and does not need to be replanted repeatedly. It can grow on fallow land, field boundaries, riverbanks and hill slopes — places where cultivating other crops is difficult,” said Gogawale, a Shiv Sena leader who hails from Raigad district.

He said that the State Government approved the Bamboo Industry Policy in October 2025.

“The policy aims to attract investments worth Rs 50,000 crore, generate more than five lakh jobs and establish 15 dedicated bamboo clusters. A major project for bamboo cultivation is also taking shape in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank,” he said.

“The policy does not restrict bamboo to furniture and handicrafts. It envisages the production of ethanol and biomethanol from bamboo biomass, as well as the use of 5 to 7 per cent bamboo biomass in place of coal in thermal power plants. This means that bamboo, which we once viewed merely as a material for house roofs, could become a pillar of the state's energy security in the future,” said Gogawale.