The reintroduction of hemp as a legal enterprise in the United States has been one of the largest-scale exercises in applied agricultural economics in recent history. Hemp has a long and storied past in the United States. The economic forces behind the ups and downs of hemp production, coupled with varying legal status throughout time, make hemp an exciting case study to understand how policy influences the forces of economics. The evolution of this reintroduction provides a real-world opportunity to understand and apply core microeconomic and marketing concepts amid uncertainty and government interventions. This hemp case study explores economic concepts including supply and demand, elasticity, price discovery, government intervention and policy, and agricultural marketing and production contracts on the backdrop of hemp production.

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