INDUSTRY INNOVATORS: THOMAS MARTIN, CEO & CO-FOUNDER OF RAW GARDEN

As cannabis becomes more and more commonplace, it’s sometimes easy to forget that meticulous farming processes lie at the core of any cannabis crop.

Growing high-quality, flavorful cannabis that keeps consumers coming back involves not only a detail-oriented growing approach, but also a finger on the pulse regarding water conservation, growing methods, limiting the use of harsh chemicals and an eye on the innovative measures needed to stay on top in a competitive industry.

For many growers, like Thomas Martin, the co-founder and CEO of Raw Garden, farming is in his DNA.

Raw Garden is now tucked away in the hills of Santa Ynez in Santa Barbara’s wine country, but as he farms cannabis today, Martin recalled his upbringing, farming grapes and drying them into raisins for the SunMaid brand. Early on, he considered the chance to one day farm cannabis — and with it, the chance to help an abundance of people in need.

“Especially in today’s highly regulated and competitive cannabis environment, a certain level of toughness is required,” Martin said. “Farming makes you tough and forces an industrious nature. It comes with certain freedoms, but more than anything it comes with tremendous amounts of stress.”

However, it’s worth it today, looking back and seeing what he’s built, despite plentiful roadblocks.

Growing into a Cannabis Farmer

Martin shared that his family did not always want him to farm. His dad wanted him to be an entrepreneur, and the rest of his family similarly cautioned him against a career in agriculture.

“We were small farmers, and if you had not scaled your operations to thousands of acres by the late20th century, it meant a menial subsistence that was lifestyle based,” Martin said. “Life was good, but that existence came with huge risks and not much monetary freedom, where you were only as good as your last crop and your next crop may be your last.”

He learned early on that growing grapes and drying them into raisins was a risky gig. There are all kinds of variables: an early spring or late frost could hinder the timing of the first buds; surviving the bloom is great, but you’d better gear up for a hot summer full of pests; after summer, hopefully you’ve kept your bunches healthy, disease free and full of sugar. Martin called the drying process “likely the most risky post-harvest SOP in agriculture.”

“Growing up with these threats, and attempting to deliver perfect crops nonetheless, built in a level of tenacity that translates well in today’s cannabis market,” Martin said. “Nothing comes easy in farming. And most certainly not for a startup company in an overregulated, overtaxed market. With this combination, pain and stress is maximized.”

When he was a college junior in 2002, his family sold their pest management and farming business. While he had the farming background and the itch for exploring cannabis, he finished school with an accounting degree and entrepreneurship in mind, along with “a lot of student debt and stubbornness.”

Martin started his finance career working with cars. Everything was moving smoothly until the 2007 financial crisis hit. Banking programs dried up, inventory climbed, and most of the financing staff, including Martin, were facing bankruptcy.

“On a whim, the dealership’s longstanding car, and weed and other drug, salesman said to me, ‘Hey, bubba, I see you struggling. You’re a farmer, why don’t you grow some weed? I’ll sell it.’

‘You sure you can sell it?’ I asked. ‘Yeah, bubba, you know me!’ I had a basement in my house. Two HID lights quickly turned to four, then 16, to 40, and so on. And just like that, I was back in farming.”

Martin was fired about six months into his first crop, admitting it was likely because of his happy, newfound commitment to cannabis by that time. His dad, “a genius Macgyver-type farmer,” worked as his righthand man, and the pair were able to battle through a steep learning curve while also landing some quality relationships with medical cannabis stores in the Bay Area.

“Since 2008, I have been a cannabis producer and have fought like hell to never look back,” Martin said.

The Birth, Growth and Perseverance of Raw Garden

When asked about the launch of Raw Garden, Martin said that everything surrounding the business exists because of serendipitous relationships and timing, great team members, a meticulous approach to farming, quality goals, consumer trust and respect and some good fortune.

Today, Raw Garden is known for its wide array of concentrate options: live sauce, live resin, cartridges, infused joints, live resin diamonds — the list goes on.

Raw Garden began to explore this element of the industry as a bit of an aside, at least initially. At the outset, and to this day, Martin’s brother-in-law Khalid Al-Naser managed sales. Al-Naser already had a longstanding fascination with hashish after spending a month in India during his late teens, and he always ensured some portion of each crop was concentrated.

“This was beneficial because we learned a lot about the post harvest handling of the plant and extraction, starting with ice-and-water and eventually the use of solvents,” Martin said.

Around this time, about 2013, Martin recalled that the Central Valley areas of Fresno and Madera Counties were in the midst of a steady, year-long political push that banned all medicinal cannabis cultivation via civil fines and potential property forfeiture.

Martin and the team had just finished building a small extraction laboratory, which became dependent on a one-acre greenhouse. Due to Fresno County’s new ordinance, the greenhouse decided to shutter. With enough of Raw Garden’s concentrate production dependent on this farm, Martin set out on a mission to find another municipality that would allow them to return to acreage sales.

“Luckily, I stumbled across Santa Barbara County via an introduction to Tutti Frutti Farms and Santa Barbara County native, Chris Cadwell,” Martin said. “Chris loved the region for cannabis production and he, along with another farmer from the Santa Maria Valley, believed in the story of relocating the Fresno/Madera growing and extraction business.”

The operation eventually shifted to some of Cadwell’s and other farmers’ Santa Barbara properties. The move also pushed Raw Garden to begin growing outdoors, in the “infamous and transverse mountain regions” of the county.

The climate, Martin said, matches the needs of vintners. The first season, they planted a number of varieties that they had otherwise only cultivated indoors. He said the richness of the crop immediately stood out, and he and his team were immediately “addicted” to the opportunity the Santa Ynez Valley could provide. They were also well aware of the region’s solid agricultural resources that were ready to support Raw Garden’s scale.

Though, Martin cautioned that the fight wasn’t over: “One big question still remained: What would the politicians have to say?”

Martin said that county leaders already liked the Raw Garden story and believed cannabis was an important crop for the future. Following its first harvest in 2015, the Raw Garden team was not standing in front of the Montecito Planning Commission, essentially requesting the commission not copy municipalities like Fresno as Santa Barbara County staff that were rushed to get ahead of new state laws that would regulate cannabis. At the time, Raw Garden existed as a small boutique and indoor concentrate brand at a few Bay Area stores, though Martin and the team still saw the opportunity to scale in this new region that allowed for an abundant amount of high-quality, freshly frozen flowers, a “dab farmer’s dream,” he said.

This was also a time that live resin was not accessibly priced, Martin explained. High-quality concentrates made from fresh-frozen flower retailed for $80-100 a gram, and the Raw Garden team members knew they could make this treasured substance more accessible if given the chance.

“Normalizing live resin became our mantra,” Martin said.