They wouldn't need to grow it, they can just pay people to bring it in. Then there would be Kudzu thefts all over town like copper. I want someone to come and steal all of my Kudzu.

Even Yankees should be aware of the ecological devastation caused by this aggressive plant and realize that no one should be allowed to intentionally grow kudzu or any other exotic invasive species.

I'm pretty sure it has almost reached southern Wisconsin. A little more CO2 in the atmosphere and everyone in the lower forty-eight states will have an opportunity witness the power of kudzu.

I say harness the power of the free market! Corporations have a long history of exterminating species if it helps them fill their vaults with gold. If they can make a dollar off it, they'll get rid of kudzu in no time at all.

But DON'T let them intentionally plant it anywhere.

From New Trend in Biofuels Has New Risks (New York Times)

"Some of the most commonly recommended species for biofuels production are also major invasive alien species," the paper says, adding that these crops should be studied more thoroughly before being cultivated in new areas.

Controlling the spread of such plants could prove difficult, the experts said, producing "greater financial losses than gains." The International Union for Conservation of Nature encapsulated the message like this: "Don't let invasive biofuel crops attack your country."

To reach their conclusions, the scientists compared the list of the most popular second-generation biofuels with the list of invasive species and found an alarming degree of overlap. They said little evaluation of risk had occurred before planting.

Does anyone remember the Disney cartoon of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"?  Be careful what you wish for!

Bart
Energy Bulletin

From 1935 to the early 1950s the Soil Conservation Service encouraged farmers in the southeastern United States to plant kudzu to reduce soil erosion as above, and the Civilian Conservation Corps planted it widely for many years.

So, in other words, the genie is already out of the bottle: growing kudzu for biomass in the south-eastern United States need not necessarily increase the damage it has already caused. One way to control any unintentional invasion would be to require growers to obtain a licence and to post a bond sufficient to cover the costs of erradicating the vine from the land on which it was planted (and the surrounding area) should the company go bankrupt.

Were a commercial industry based on kudzu (not just for biofuels, but for honey, animal feed, and food) to become established -- and by commercial, I mean without support provided through subsidies, import protection and mandated blending obligations -- it might even provide an economic incentive to remove kudzu from places where it is not wanted.

By the way, in case anybody is wondering, I lived for 14 years in the south-east, so I am very familiar with kudzu's impressive growth ... and its capacity for smothering forests.

The conundrum is whether to continue the search for biological agents to control the plant. (I'm not talking about easily managed grazers, like goats and llamas, which the City of Chattanooga has employed.) According to the Wikipedia article again:

Efforts are currently being organized by the U.S. Forest Service to search for biological control agents for kudzu. Several fungi are pathogenic to kudzu. Colletotrichum gloeosporioides is one tested example.

It would be ironic, in other words, if just as the industry were taking off, a fungus started to attack it, courtesy of the USFS, requiring it to then start using nasty fungicides.

No doubt I have missed out something in my arm-chair analysis. But that is what blogs like this are for, right? To test ideas and then have them challenged.

These are only my personal opinions.

So... my revised view... do NOTHING to encourage corporations to exploit kudzu!

It would be better to start community composting projects and distribute the rich organic material to gardeners as a soil conditioner. That's what I do with the invasive weeds threatening my prairie remnant. I compost wheel barrow after wheel barrow load of sweet clover and add it to my vegetable garden.

However, I suspect the scale of the kudzu problem demands additional solutions. Hmmm... I'll have to think abut this.

Which does not mean we should make it worse. Remember, one of the points is we don't know how do large scale Kudzu harvesting. A lot of the biomass is in the roots, and we don't know how to mass harvest root crops with the roots on that scale.  So further cultivating it not a good idea. The genie is out of the bottle for rabbits in Australia, and Nutria through half the U.S. But nobody is suggesting we take up cultivating them and make the problem worse.

[N]utria were imported to the United States in the 1930s for their fur, and showed up in Virginia in the early 1950s. When the fur-farming experiments went bust, most nutria were set free.

Perhaps had they been required to post a bond against letting them free, they might not have done that.

Indeed, your comment about Australia, Gar, is not true, and shows that with careful controls, even Australia, which is highly cautious when it comes to invasive species, now allows rabbit farming (PDF) under strict controls:

Rabbit farming was prohibited throughout Australia until 1987 because of the pest status of wild rabbits. Prohibition was first lifted in Western Australia, though strict controls on commercial rabbit farming were applied. Over the last 5-6 years state legislation has been changed to allow commercial rabbit farming in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.

Finally, the Wikipedia article doesn't talk about harvesting the roots (why would you?), but notes that the kudzu vine can be killed by cutting off the crown of the root. Clearly, nobody would even attempt farming kudzu on a large scale unless they had all the bugs worked out.

In short, this may still be a stupid idea, but none of your arguments against it so far are convincing, Gar.

These are only my personal opinions.

Which works of you have one vine. If you have an acre of the stuff, fuggetaboutit.  Again: We. Do. Not. Have. A. Means. Of. Large. Scale. Harvesting. Of. Kudzu. That is one of the points in the article advocating harvesting.

The kudzu vine can be killed by cutting off the crown of the root. ... Which works of you have one vine. If you have an acre of the stuff, fuggetaboutit.

Why fuggetaboutit? All that means is that the performance bond would need to be large enough to employ enough saw-wielding people to get the job done.

Again: We. Do. Not. Have. A. Means. Of. Large. Scale. Harvesting. Of. Kudzu. That is one of the points in the article advocating harvesting.

Gar, I think you need a few more verbs in those sentences. In any case, if there does not yet exist a method for harvesting kudzu on a large scale, then we're not going to see it planted on a commercial scale any time soon, no?

My point was about how to deal with the rampant invasiveness of the kudzo.

As for the proposal as described in the original Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, I agree that it begs some questions.

The whole point about kudzu, I thought, was how quickly it regenerates from the roots. It would make a good source of cellulosic ethanol, in other words (if and when cellulosic ethanol ever becomes competitive to make), based on what could be harvest from the above-ground part of the plant.

But it sounds as if the people looking into kudzu as a possible ethanol feedstock have their eye on the starch in the roots, not the cellulose and hemi-cellulose in the vine. In that case, the prospect of somebody developing machines that DEEPLY dig into the soil to harvest the roots sounds pretty scary from the standpoint of soil conservation.

These are only my personal opinions.