the concentrates issue
E X T RAC TO R P R O F I L E
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urbanXtracts
LEAFMAGAZINES.COM
The revitalization of New York State is underway and Cannabis is the key. Learn how urbanXtracts is forging a path towards a greener future in the Empire State. COMING FROM MANHATTAN, urbanXtracts is just an hour or so up the Palisades Parkway along the mighty Hudson River. You know you’re getting close when you see two copper-topped grain silos poking out above the trees. Less than four years ago, those silos and the surrounding buildings were in a state of disrepair, and the town of Warwick was looking for an industry to replace the recently decommissioned prison system, which had been its primary source of income and employment for nearly a century. The first “urban extracts” to come to Warwick were underprivileged and troubled youth who came up from New York City in the 1930s to experience and learn from life working on a farm. It is the legacy of that initiative by Eleanor Roosevelt almost 100 years ago (including the grain silos!) that is now part of the founding story of urbanXtracts, a
JUly 2022
company that is among the first seed-to-market growers and processors of hemp in New York State. CEO and founder Eran Sherin said, “It was the town’s initiative to revitalize and create new economic opportunities here and find the right industry that has a future to it, and hemp became that initiative.” In 2018, Sherin’s was among the first companies to put down roots here, and for good reason. “If you want to get into farming, you want to have good soil,” Sherin explained, “and some of the best soil in the world is right here in Orange County and it’s black dirt.” There are approximately 26,000 acres of this soil here in what is known as the Black Dirt Region, and it is so unique that it’s actually illegal to remove and sell. And it is this soil that makes the hemp grown by farmers here so special. Sherin said that for the last four years they’ve
been building an ecosystem of a supply chain. “Grow, process, develop, market,” said Sherin. “And in that ecosystem, we try to be a company that sits on the infrastructure level – so we don’t grow ourselves, we empower farmers to grow by supplying them with genetics that are proven, and we can further downstream them into products and capitalize on that.” Among a number of framed OCM (Office of Cannabis Management) certificates on a wall near their sample store display is the first-ever license awarded by the State of New York for the production of food and beverage products with hemp extracts. “That is the uniqueness of the hemp program that we have,” said Sherin. “The core aspect of the whole process from turning flower into end-products is the extraction process. We’ve always seen it as a craft and we’ve always wanted it to be a craft.”
