Hops give the 2nd best experience for leveling up your Farming skill in a single season (102 to 126 depending on how fast you grow it to maturity). It is only beaten out by a mature Ancient Fruit crop. A large amount of Hops Starters can be a great way to quickly level up your Farming skill your first summer.
If you place your Hops in the Seed Maker (gaining 1.95 Hops Starters on average per Hops item via Seed Maker's mechanics), they will sell for about (30g x 1.95) 58.5g instead of 25g. This is far less than Pale Ale's 300g (420g Artisan Profession) from Hops in a Keg but, also only takes 20 minutes, while Pale Ale takes a good 2,250 minutes to make (and occupies your Kegs). This also secondarily means that Hops are demonstrably efficient for attempting to gather larger amount of Ancient Seeds (the Seed Maker gives one every ~200 items inputted) as they also have the highest individual crop generation of any item over a full season (even more so in lengthy Greenhouse set ups). At 17 Hops over a full summer-season, you will get roughly 1 Ancient Seeds for every 11.76 Hops Starters planted, while making a fair profit at a fair pace. If you have enough Seed Makers, selling Hops Starters could reasonably net you 36.833g (58.5g x 17 Hops / 27 Grow days) (or "58.5g" in extended Greenhouse use) per day per, untraversable, Hops Starter tile farmed. This is a lot of money. Potatoes are 7.667g per day. Blueberry is "only" 20.8g per day. The only caveat is that it is hard to have Farming Level 9 for Seed Makers by Summer of Year 1..(looks above)