On May 5th 2015, James Comer, Commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture (KDA), held a press conference in a Lexington-based tobacco facility belonging to G.F. Vaughan, the last remaining tobacco processor in Kentucky.

His message was historic, his location symbolic: the first year of state-sanctioned industrial hemp farming under the Farm Bill succeeded, and the pilot program’s second year promises to be bigger and better, with the potential to elevate the entire state economy by restoring industrial hemp as the new “cash crop.”

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- Kentucky's second hemp crop in decades is expected to surpass 1,700 acres, up from about three dozen acres a year ago, as the versatile crop's comeback starts to attract interest from processors looking to turn it into products, state agriculture officials said Tuesday.

Hemp advocates led by state Agriculture Commissioner James Comer touted the crop at an event in an old tobacco warehouse that could symbolize the past and future of Kentucky agriculture. Tobacco production has plunged in the past decade, and farmers have looked for alternative crops to maintain income. Hemp, which once flourished in Kentucky, is seen by some as one potential option on the farm.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- Some observers say a North Dakota bill passed this legislative session that sets guidelines for industrial hemp production should make it easier to grow and may help create an industry for Indian tribes, although it could take a while to sort out federal policies.

Hemp can be used to make clothing, lotion and many other products, but growing it has been illegal under federal law because it is type of cannabis plant and looks like marijuana. Unlike marijuana, people can't get high on hemp.

The measure sponsored by Republican Rep. David Monson is meant to put the state in line with the new federal farm bill that allows hemp to be grown through state agriculture departments and college research stations.

DES MOINES — Everyone knows that politics makes strange bedfellows.

A pair of Linn County legislators has — unintentionally — taken that to a new level: They call the same house home.

But not at the same time.

Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, and Rep. Art Staed, D-Cedar Rapids, both call — or have called — 2905 Alleghany Dr. NE home.

Paulsen grew up there from the late 1960s to 1983 when he left to attend the University of Iowa. Sixteen years later, Staed and his wife, Susan, bought the house and reared their children there.

“I wasn’t involved in politics back then,” Staed says. “I didn’t know Kraig at that time.”

ORLANDO, FLA. — Hemp ingredients may add protein, magnesium, phytosterols and fiber to products, said Tom Vierhile, innovation insights director for Datamonitor Consumer. Hemp is non-allergenic, and the plants are sustainably grown, he added.

Yet many people may associate hemp with marijuana, and that perception could put a buzz-kill on hemp’s entry into food and beverage product launches.

“Hemp is misunderstood,” Mr. Vierhile said in an April 9 presentation at Ingredient Marketplace in Orlando. “That is really one of the key problems with hemp going forward.”

Around 120 Kentucky farmers will grow hemp this year as the state enters its second of five years of hemp research and testing as allowed under the Farm Bill.

Adam Watson is the industrial hemp program coordinator for the Kentucky Department of Agriculture. He says though growing hemp commercially isn’t legal yet, there’s growing interest in the crop.

“We’re still at the beginning stages of research,” he said. “Today we can’t sit and tell you this is the most economical way to produce it or this is the best crop to be growing it for like seed versus fiber but what we have learned is there is a wide interest from industry.”

American Seed & Oil Company Brings DuBe Hemp Energy Shot to Three More States - Colorado, New Hampshire and Vermont

DALLAS, March 27, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Algae International Group, Inc. (OTC: ALGA), through its operating subsidiary American Seed & Oil Company, today announced an expansion of the previously announced  distribution agreement of the DuBe Hemp Energy Shot in Texas and Kentucky.  American Seed & Oil will now be selling the DuBe Hemp Energy Shot in Colorado,New Hampshire and Vermont.

As hemp makes a comeback in the U.S. after a decades-long ban on its cultivation, scientists are reporting that fibers from the plant can pack as much energy and power as graphene, long-touted as the model material for supercapacitors. They’re presenting their research, which a Canadian start-up company is working on scaling up, at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.

Although hemp (cannabis sativa) and marijuana (cannabis sativa var. indica) come from a similar species of plant, they are very different and confusion has been caused by deliberate misinformation with far reaching effects on socioeconomics as well as on environmental matters.