On 14 plots scattered across Pennsylvania this year, farmers reintroduced what was once a dominant cash crop to the state: industrial hemp, the straight-laced, non-psychoactive cannabis cousin of marijuana.

Not one of the growers had any prior experience cultivating the plant, which grows so quickly it’s nicknamed “weed.” So some problems were to be expected. However, nobody anticipated one complication.

“We had some projects that really did everything right, but were completely overrun by weeds,” — real weeds, said Russell Redding, the state’s Secretary of Agriculture. “You’d have fields that were beautifully green, but overwhelmed by unwanted species.”

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Sam Wood ~ Philly.com ~