St. Louis’ agtech ecosystem is under the microscope this week as a delegation of 20 global leaders representing seven different countries descend on the region with an eye toward strengthening global collaboration on food security and sustainable agriculture.
The intiative—AgriTech for Resilience, Innovation & Sustainable Ecosystems, dubbed ARISE—brings representatives from the U.S., U.K., Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico together to forge long-term international cooperation around innovation, shared research, and regenerative agriculture. St. Louis represents the second of three stops, with Brazil getting a visit last December and Cambridge, England, seeing one next month.
Keep up with local business news and trends
Subscribe to the St. Louis Business newsletter to get the latest insights sent to your inbox every morning.
Why It Matters: The Gateway region is no stranger to international delegations, but this one is special, says Stephanie Regagnon, executive director of The Yield Lab Institute, a St. Louis-based think tank focused on helping entrepreneurs in the agriculture space. She explains it builds on the groundwork laid by the World Trade Center to create more international connections focused on agriculture that the local industry could then take advantage of.
“It is not coincidental that this grant involves the U.K., Latin America, and St. Louis,” she says. “This is just a direct outcome of very long term strategic outreach [from] the World Trade Center and efforts like Cultivar.”
Tim Nowak, executive director of the World Trade Center St. Louis, explains the push to establish global connections that started well over a decade ago in identifying and elevating the industries St. Louis excels in, particularly plant science and agtech, and gave way to the region to begin establishing ties with Argentina in 2017 and the U.K. in 2019.
“[This week] is just a continuation of relationship building around what we do best, where we’ve put a flag in the ground and said we’ve got a value proposition to offer globally,” he says.
ARISE was also intentionally planned to come to St. Louis at the same week as BioSTL’s Global AgriFood Innovation Summit, which is also focused on regenerative agriculture. Regagnon says the idea was to let the delegation engage with that programming as well.
“It’s really exciting that we were able to align our efforts in St. Louis on regenerative agriculture with this global initiative on regenerative agriculture, and bring those things together,” she says. “The whole ecosystem has put in a lot of work, and has very much opened their arms and their doors to hosting these folks all week. It’ll just be a really nice introduction, overview, and really intense deep dive into our ecosystem.”
What’s Next: The grant for ARISE comes from the U.K. government and is aimed at forming “concrete partnerships and collaborations, both research and commercial, potentially farmer collaborations, etc.,” Regagnon says. Should those form, she expects the British government would commit additional funding.
For his part, Nowak is already thinking about Africa as the next international destination where the World Trade Center should lay the groundwork for strong agricultural ties to St. Louis.
“Agtech, agribusiness, if there is any point of connection that can be made and grown with Africa, it is in this space,” he says. “We want to build these relationships there, because arguably the greatest point of connection economically, whether it’s investment or trade, is directly in this space, in agribusiness.” —Eric Schmid
