Federal officials say they will allow North Dakota State University to grow industrial hemp for research provided the school agrees to a variety of conditions, mainly dealing with security.

A seven-page "memorandum of agreement" that NDSU officials received Monday came eight years after the university applied for permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

It also came less than two weeks after a court hearing in a lawsuit filed by two North Dakota farmers who want to grow industrial hemp under state regulations. NDSU's long-delayed federal application was intertwined in that lawsuit. The farmers used NDSU's plight to bolster their argument and NDSU submitted a document supporting the farmers.

NDSU has been required by state lawmakers to study industrial hemp as an alternative crop but has been unable to get DEA permission.

Rick Johnson, a special assistant attorney general who represents the university, said in court documents submitted in the farmers' lawsuit that NDSU was being required to spend money on security measures such as fencing, without any assurance that DEA would ever approve the research project.

The new memorandum of agreement, which has spaces for the signatures of Burton Johnson, an associate professor in NDSU's plant sciences department, and Gary Olenkiewicz, the DEA special agent in charge in Chicago, states that under the conditions specified, "the application for (permission) will be granted."

The security measures called for in the agreement range from keeping inventories of hemp seeds to installing 10-foot-high, ten-gauge-wire mesh fencing around the plants.

Ken Grafton, NDSU's dean of agriculture, said the proposal is being evaluated. "No one in administration, to my knowledge, has seen it," he said Thursday. "It's not a done deal."

Rick Johnson and Burton Johnson did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment on the proposal.

DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney also declined comment other than to say that with every application, "one of the strongest things we look at are the security requirements."

The DEA has issued such licenses in the past, including one to the University of Mississippi to grow bulk marijuana for research, according to the Justice Department.

Adam Eidinger, spokesman for the nonprofit lobbying group Vote Hemp, which funded the farmers' lawsuit, said the group considers the DEA proposal to NDSU a victory. Tim Purdon, an attorney for the farmers, said he also was glad to see it.

"I don't know that there's a direction relationship between our lawsuit … but the timing would certainly lead one to conclude that our efforts (helped)," he said.