WEPA! Farm owner and proud Puerto Rican Luis Vega grew up as a city boy. Born and raised in East New York, Brooklyn, Vega got his masters degree in business administration and worked in finance in downtown Manhattan. He never could have expected where he would end up: Now, Vega lives and runs an industrial hemp farm an hour and a half north of the city in Shelton, Connecticut.

I never thought Id be a farmer, he said, laughing as he looked across his two-acre plot filled with 2,000 pounds of his very own Young Sin Ten, a strain of industrial hemp, planted on either side of him.

The cannabis industry is in a rapid, uncertain stage of growth. Its projected to have a legal market worth $66.3 billion by 2025, according to a May report from Grand View Research . Yet, the federal government still classifies the cannabis plant as a Schedule I narcotic, illicit at the federal level under the Controlled Substances Act.