For the past week, St. Louis’ innovation ecosystem built around agriculture and plant science has gotten a double dose of global attention, with an international agtech delegation from seven countries visiting even as BioSTL’s Global AgriFood Innovation Summit was underway.
These events are instrumental in helping to form and reinforce the way people around the world understand St. Louis’ value as an agricultural powerhouse, industry leaders say.
“To me the uniqueness of the ecosystem here in St Louis is the connection that brings innovation to the stakeholders, farmers, in a super integrated way. And it’s very hard to see this in other places in the world,” says Mario Caccamo, CEO and director of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Caccamo was part of the ARISE initiative, which brought to St. Louis some 20 global leaders representing seven different countries with an eye toward strengthening global collaboration on food security and sustainable agriculture. This trip adds to the scores of visits he’s made in the past, he notes, saying he’s always refreshed by the way St. Louis’ agtech ecosystem naturally forges connections between innovators, researchers, companies, and farmers.
Belinda Clarke presents about the ARISE Initiative at the Greater St. Louis Inc. headquarters on Feb. 2, 2026.
Belinda Clarke, who directs Agri-TechE, an independent membership organization that convenes farmers and growers with scientists, innovators, and entrepreneurs to create a global innovation hub for agri-tech in the U.K., was also among those visiting as part of the international delegation.
“ARISE has given us the license and agency to be able to lock into where the St. Louis ecosystem is now, and see where we can take the conversations forward,” she says. “St. Louis is probably the innovation ecosystem for agritech that I know best in the world so I don’t need my arm twisted to come back.”
Clarke, who last visited in 2020, says she’s struck by how much the local innovation landscape has changed in the six years since, remarking, “There’s clearly been a lot of investment.”
“I’m very charmed by the potential for bringing different technologies that have been validated in other sectors into agriculture,” she says. “I think six years ago, we didn’t see that. It was all very plant science driven, and now it’s been quite exciting to hear about geospatial coming into ag tech as well. Exciting things happen at the interface of disciplines.”
It’s a sentiment local leaders share.
“Proximity is what leads to intentional collaboration and community, and that community then leads to that virtuous cycle where you know the people you need to contact, you know where to find them, and you can have this really natural and organic exchange of ideas and talent and innovation that leads to accelerating innovation to market,” says Emily Lohse-Busch, executive director of the 39 North Agtech Innovation District.
For global companies, this quality is what helped drive them to not only establish partnerships within the St. Louis region, but also roots. Take the German seed company KWS, which began looking in the mid-2010s for a second place to locate beyond its headquarters in Einbeck, Germany.
Luz Irina Calderón Villalobos speaks during a panel at BioSTL’s Global AgriFood Innovation Summit on Feb. 3, 2026.
Scientific affairs manager for the America’s Luz Irina Calderón Villalobos says the company sought an affordable region with a network of organizations that could coalesce innovation as well as a deep bench of talent. When speaking to other global companies at the BioSTL event, she says St. Louis wasn’t at the top of KWS’ list, but rose after multiple local institutions and nonprofits convinced the company to set up shop here, which it did with it’s Gateway Research Center in 2015.
“Being here has really helped us capitalize on the tremendous talent that there is and also keep us exposed to the latest in innovations,” Caderón says. “That, without doubt, has helped KWS really advance to the next generation of development of new breeding technology.”
On the same panel, Carlos Garcia, the USA site head of Brazil-based CTC Genomics, shared that his company was seeking to link into innovation abroad in 2018. The company focuses on sugarcane and was lagging when it came to exposure to new technologies in crops like corn and soy that could be translated to the main crop it works with.
“We were looking for an ecosystem that allowed access to expertise as well as talent,” he says. “It was very important for us [to have access to] state of the art infrastructure that we cannot have access to in Brazil. We found St. Louis as a place that has all of that.”
CoverCress CEO Jim Hedges adds he’s found St. Louis to be a singularly unique place to locate an ag business, having worked for Monsanto, Land O Lakes, and a half-dozen startups. It’s a space that allows younger companies to focus intently on the product that differentiates them and then partner with larger players whenever possible.
“I’ve never seen the type of resources that we have in St. Louis. It’s a pretty special place,” he says.
More and more this willingness to partner is the norm across the local ag ecosystem.
“More people are understanding that we don’t have to have all the shiny objects ourselves,” says Stephanie Regagnon, executive director of The Yield Lab Institute. “We actually just need to know the really smart people and the really impactful and effective regions to work with to move these things along faster, to help each of our communities individually.”
Valeria Arredondo pitches her company Beam CropTech during a session at BioSTL’s Global AgriFood Innovation Summit on Feb. 4, 2026.
Garcia from CTC Genomics, as just one example, quipped that a solid collaboration between his company and another grew organically from a chance encounter at a happy hour a year earlier.
These qualities continue to attract new people and companies, like Valaria Arredondo of the Argentine company Beam CropTech, which presented during BioSTL’s event to fellow startups and potential investors.
“We are trying to make a home here. We became members of the 39 North. We are finding in this ecosystem all the capacities that we need to scale the technology in the next steps,” she says. “That is why this hub is attracting talents and technologies from all over the world. And once the technology comes to St. Louis, they can be scaled.”