SACRAMENTO ( AP ) - John Roulac wants to give California agriculture a boost and cut his transportation costs at the same time.

Roulac is the founder and chief executive officer of Nutiva, an up-and-coming organic food company that is based in California but processes and packages most of its products in Canada. The reason: Nutiva sells bars, protein powder, seeds and oil made with hemp, a cousin of marijuana.

Hemp has only a trace amount of tetrahydrocannabinols, or THC, the drug in marijuana, but hemp can't be legally grown in the United States without a permit from the Drug Enforcement Administration. And the DEA has only allowed an experimental plot in Hawaii, according to Adam Eidinger, a spokesman for Vote Hemp, the lobbying arm of the hemp industry.

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