I think it has less to do with the profitability per se as the lowering of losses. The average farm payment for commodity crops is actually less than 50% of parity these days. If hemp can come in at 75% of parity, then it looks great as a potential crop (the dead end becomes a longer tunnel).

Other countries don't tie the crop to the stigma that the US does, so they're going to provide more support systems and processing facilities.

The fundamental problem with any of these 'newfangled' ideas will come down to energy in the future, as much as fertilizer costs.

Biodynamic farms spend a lot less on typical fertilizers by favoring biological processes to break out nutrients from soil and rock dust. It takes time to establish, but less fossil energy.

Hemp as a seed crop can be a useful contributor to biodynamics and regenerative agriculture. When rotated between fiber and seed uses, it can make a useful pest and weed control tool.

The shortsightedness of modern mechanized agriculture doesn't leave room for caring for the soil over the long term unless government forces conservation and wildlife preservation into the mix with expensive subsidies and 'state'-operated land grant universities. Those universities are less and less concerned with the sustainability of the land and more concerned with the corporate building-naming process.

From the overall usefulness perspective, we should be comparing hemp in all its forms to the corn-on-corn short-sightedness of ethanol subsidies.

The story about farmers chasing a hemp balloon is really a story about how change and land husbandry is being forced upon those who are least able to afford it, to the benefit of those least willing to pay for it: as agriculture under the USDA's 'trade-balancing' has been operating for a century.