Farmers Hold Out Hope for Hemp Crops.

• Position: Brief Article

For the second year in a row, Congress had to bail out American farmers. Grain prices plunged in 1999, well below the break-even point, as did the livestock market. Pigs were selling for as little as $40 apiece; wheat for less than $2.91 a bushel, driving farm losses.

But farmers in states as diverse as Hawaii and North Dakota, seeking new crops to drive up a sagging economy, turned to an old one. They successfully lobbied to restore an age-old crop (George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew it) to help renew the family farm: hemp.

Congress banned marijuana in 1937, and in the process extended the law to hemp, a look-alike for marijuana and, indeed, in the same plant family. The laws were loosened during World War II (the federal government gave farmers seeds to spur the Hemp for Victory drive), but banned it again once the war ended. Hemp doesn't have the narcotic kick that...