Sustainability Context

But what exactly is kudzu? I've heard of it but I've ignorant as to try it as a regular part of my diet. Doing a little research, I find that kudzu comes from the bean family and is originally from Japan. As a legume, kudzu can control soil erosion and has been used for making soaps, lotions, and compost.

In addition to its many uses as food and for grazing, there is growing interest in the US for using Kudzu to make bio-ethanol. Kudzu requires little water or fertilizer to grow. It grows very rapidly and in fact has gotten out of control in the Southern states, where it is referred to as the plant that "ate the South."

Jaymi Heimbuch at Ecogeek writes:

"Researchers at the University of Toronto and the US Department of Agriculture are taking a close look at kudzu, a native plant of Asia that can grow more than 6.5 feet a week and is nearly impossible to get rid of. The team examined the amount of carbohydrate in the plant – the part that gets turned into ethanol – at different times of year in different parts of the plant. They found the root carries over 2/3 of the carbs by weight, and they estimate kudzu could produce 2.2 to 5.3 tons of carbs per acre. This translates to 270 gallons of ethanol per acre, comparable to the ethanol yield of corn."

Given that energy yields similar to corn can be achieved with far fewer resources, it will be interesting to see what researcher will say about how kudzu could be used for making fuel.

More interestingly, I also found out from Wikipedia that Kudzu is used in Chinese Medicine and that it's one of the known plants used for medicine I've been taking for allergies. In traditional medicine, it is known as 葛根 or kakkon.