Growing hemp in Kentucky means something different for everyone who does it.

For Jake and Andy Graves, father and son businessmen in Lexington, it means winning the battle for legalization they have been fighting for decades. For Joe Schroeder and Lora Smith, husband and wife farmers, it means a time for small-scale experimentation.

For Alyssa Erickson and Kirsten Bohnert, the “Kentucky Hempsters,” it means using their talents to reshape perceptions of central Appalachia. For Mike Lewis it means putting veterans back to work. For Stephanie Brown, a weaver in Louisville, it means bringing an old textile design to life in a new way. For David Williams, a professor at University of Kentucky, it means incredible scientific access to research a crop that has been illegal for his entire life.

For Todd Howard, a Community Supported Agriculture founder and small-scale farmer in eastern Kentucky, it means transforming abandoned mine lands into farmlands. For Carolyn and Jacob Gahn, owners of Sweetgrass Granola, it means providing healthy and homegrown foods to customers.

While each of these folks is gravitating to the industry for his or her personal reasons, what brought them together is Section 7606 of the Agricultural Act of 2014.

On Feb. 7, 2014, the bill was signed into law. It authorized five-year pilot programs through universities and state departments of agriculture. Currently, 26 states (including several in the South) have been approved to grow industrial hemp: some for research, some for commercial value. For the next four years, hemp can be grown and processed to produce fiber for textiles, paper and building materials, as well as seed and oil for food, beauty products, biopharmaceuticals and fuel.

But all eyes are on Kentucky, where bipartisan support led by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer has made the state a leader in industrial hemp production. Farmers across the state, many of whom once grew tobacco, are planting some of the first hemp seeds that have been grown in this country since the crop was banned nearly 60 years ago.

The Kentucky State Department of Agriculture has licensed more than 100 programs at universities, private farms and processing sites for the 2015 season. Kentucky's industrial hemp pilot programs have dramatically increased since last year; 121 participants, including 24 processors, are participating this year. They expect to plant 1,742 acres this year, compared to 33 acres in 2014.

Leaders across the country are looking to the Bluegrass State for answers, hoping to learn from its successes and failures so they can eventually make hemp part of their own economies. It’s an exciting time for experimentation, but with only five years secured for the pilot sites, farmers are feeling the pressure to prove hemp can be part of central Appalachia’s economic transition.

“I hope that the politics hold regardless of the shifts in administration and that folks will give it a good solid try,” says Joe Schroeder, CEO of Freedom Seed & Feed, a farming company that calls itself the “first federally permitted hemp farm” since the ban. “It will take us a few years to get to the point of understanding how we can benefit the farmers in the state, because we have a lot of farmers that need help.”