A look at major events in U.S. and world history as they influenced, and as they may have been influenced by, the cultivation and use of hemp.

Hemp as a Modern U.S. Commodity Crop provides an overview of industrial hemp as an agronomic crop in western cropping systems. Emphasis is given to the long history of hemp, mostly in the United States, and to current production issues pertinent in the US as well as Europe and Canada. There are many questions still to be answered starting with those to be addressed by the most basic classical plant breeding techniques and continuing to the most modern analytical techniques of plant tissues and genetics.