Growth industry: hemp farmers prepare for second Colorado crop in 60 years.

• Author: Buchsbaum, Lee
• Position: STATE of the STATE

First of all, let's get one thing straight: Hemp is not marijuana, and it can't get you high.

Dozens of countries grow industrial hemp for its seeds, stalk and fibers--employing hundreds of thousands and bringing in truckloads of revenue. Until last year, planting it anywhere in the U.S. was prohibited. But the passage of Colorado's Proposition 64 in 2012 legalizing the usage of recreational marijuana turned the tables on the powers that be, forcing the simultaneous legalization of industrial hemp and mandating the establishment of a permitting framework.

Today more than 60,000 acres of hemp are cultivated just north of the U.S. border, and Canadian farmers are reaping a billion-dollar harvest as they export seeds for food, hemp oil for soap, and other parts of the plant for myriad uses. The industry's growth has been so strong that cultivators have effectively outstripped available space while demand throughout the U.S. only increases.

Advocates like Zev Paiss, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Hemp Association, say hemp's market potential is much stronger than marijuana's will ever be. While most of us are only familiar with hemp as a fabric, it is used in some 25,000 to 50,000 products. You can buy hemp milk at your local grocery store, hemp ice cream at some gas stations, silkysoft hemp clothing in malls, and hemp products loaded with Cannabidiols, or CBD's, for medicinal use are showing up nationwide.

Rather quietly in 2014, more than 200 acres were legally cultivated in Colorado--the first crop in almost 60 years. Though a tiny harvest compared to corn, wheat and soybeans, nearly everyone recognizes the modern industry is still in its infancy. But it's not just the hippies who are crowing that "it won't be long" before tens of thousands of acres here are sewn with different varietals as farmers cash in on pent-up demand and capitalize on new uses for the plant. Though it's no longer a legal battle to grow on the state level, enthusiastic hemp pioneers are still fighting a severe seed shortage, due in large part to federal customs and other agencies that continue to block the importation of viable seeds.

FOLLOWING COLORADO'S LEAD

Since 2012, hemp advocates in Kentucky and more than 20 other states have followed Colorado's example, loosening restrictions on industrial production in one form or another. However, Colorado is the only state that allows unfettered growing as long as permits are acquired from the state's Department of...