At $21 a Pound, Roasted Hemp Seeds Look Like a Cash Cow

By Amber Taufen
Source: westword.com


These are for eating, not for planting (and then smoking).

Hemp seeds have started infiltrating grocery-store shelves across America. They're often sold shelled and in bulk quantities, but some producers have also been packaging them as snack items. Roasted and seasoned, they're fine snacks -- they taste nothing like pot and don't get you high, but they're high in protein (nine grams in three tablespoons) and full of omega essential fatty acids.

But when we saw a bag of Ziggy Marley Hemp Rules -- seeds that are USDA certified organic -- selling for $7.99 for six ounces (before tax), we started considering the potential of hemp seeds as a cash crop.

These hemp seeds cost $7.99 for six ounces.


But there's clearly potential for variation. An acre that only produces 600 pounds of seeds, for example, would yield about $12,784 worth of hemp seeds.

By way of contrast, in 2013 an acre of corn was expected to gross about $916 (based on the average price of a bushel of corn and the average yield of bushels per acre), and an acre of soybeans was expected to gross about $648 (based on the same metrics).

You can't ignore the cost of packing and marketing, of course, and there's more overhead to be considered. But even so, it's clear there's money to be made in the hemp industry through more than just fiber production.