So says wiki. Why are people not all over harvesting kudzu for animal feed?
Even with these storage issues it’s prolific and free. Why don’t farmers go after it?
Well, there you go - it’s hard to bale, you’d have to go out there with a machete and get it yourself.
It grows in places that aren’t very conducive to mass harvesting. Kudzu runs wild in places like hilly riverbanks, beside large roads, and through rugged semi-forested areas. Unlike regular hay, those aren’t the types of places that you can just run a tractor casually over in rows. Kudzu moves quickly and you certainly don’t want to plant anymore in a nice open field for these purposes.
Kudzu was originally used as a forage crop, with disastrous results.
If you run a mechanical harvester through a field of kudzu, you’ll wind up with vines wrapped around the cutters and have to stop and clear the equipment. You’ll have to clean the equipment before you leave the field to lessen the chance that you’ll wind up contaminating a non-infested field.
You could release a herd of cattle into the field to graze, but you’d have to manage the manure, to keep seeds from reinfesting the field or being spread to non-infested areas.
The City of Tallahassee spent millions on kudzu control and then abandoned the project in lieu of a much more economically and ecologically sound project: We hired a herd of sheep, a herder, and a sheepdog. The herder and the dog drive the sheep to vacant lots and parks around town, let 'em eat all the kudzu, and then move 'em to another site. It costs only a couple hundred thousand a year, and no expensive machinery, sheep feed, or poison/weed killers are necessary. Plus, the sheep poo fertilizes the soil.
Aside from that, I understand kudzu is also edible to people, and it also makes great paper. It’s almost as useful and versatile as hemp! 
ETA: AFAIK, the program was discontinued after 2005, which was the designated end of the five-year experimental program. I’m about to e-mail the city and ask what happened to the sheep and if we’re ever getting them back for kudzu control. It was one of my favorite things to brag about this town. (read: One of the only things to brag about in this town…)
Having recently been involved in a post about the Japanese word katsuragi–“kudzu belt”–I learned that kudzu is Arrowroot. Any difference between wild Kudzu and the variety used as a source of the arrowroot powder we can buy in baking sections of grocery stores?
If not, there’s another use for those weeds.
Er, no, it isn’t. Classic Western arrowroot, of immortal nursery pudding fame, is Maranta arundinacea. Arrowroot - Wikipedia
Kudzu is Pueraria lobata, sometimes known as “Japanese arrowroot” because you can use it to sticky up food similarly.
Kudzu - Wikipedia
Kudzu-based biofuels! I’m going to be as rich as Jed Clampett!
I’m trying to figure out why this wouldn’t work.
Are there enough sugars in it to ferment?
You aren’t the first to think of it.
But I’m the first to post it on the Dope, and what else matters?
As far as I can tell, it can’t be controlled. At least not easily, I went from a patch about 50 sq ft to over 2000 sq ft while I took one summer off and went to Korea. I finally sold the land just to get away from it. The current owner spends a lot of time cutting it back and he lets his goats eat it and also makes baskets from the vines… Left undisturbed some of the roots and vines were easily 6-8 inches diameter.
I’m sure it can be isolated for industrial use, if by no other means than concrete and flamethrowers, backed by liberal applications of Agent Orange. Then its growth rate becomes an asset rather than a liability.
Or you could just nuke it from orbit, just to be sure.
What’s it used for in Japan (or wherever it is native)?
About thirty years ago, I had the idea of making tires from kudzu, the theory being that they would grow back as fast as they wore out.
The down side is that you’d have to drive about half a million miles a year to keep them from taking over your car completely.
Like most invasive plants, in its native area I understand it’s not really invasive because it fits into its own ecosystem.
Once the model plants like switchgrass and Miscanthus have been used to determine the best methods of cellulosic fermentation, varieties of the process will surely be developed for whatever plants are locally available. But, as on researcher I asked this same question of so clearly stated, there are no grants for working with kudzu right now.
I’ll need to poke around later to find a cite, but there was once a kudzu ranch in Alabama, I believe, to grow high quality plants to ship to Asia for culinary purposes.