What do Walt Disney, Chuck Berry and Mark Twain have in common?

Walt Disney, Chuck Berry and Mark Twain are all children of St. Louis, Missouri, known variously as the “Gateway to the West,” “the AgCoast,” and even “The Silicon Valley of AgTech.”

Highlights:

• St Louis has all the hallmarks of an effective agri-tech innovation ecosystem.
• Key to enabling this translation are the activities of The Yield Lab and BioSTL's BioGenerator. The latter has invested $26 million in 83 high growth ventures, which have leveraged around $1 billion from other global investors. Collectively seven of the top companies in the portfolio have a combined market cap of over $1 billion and have leveraged over $55 million in federal commercialisation grants.
• Worthy of note is the tight collaboration between the city, state, USDA and economic development organisations. A strategic, concerted 20 year effort to develop a position in agri-tech has resulted in the development of focussed centres across St Louis. Critical to this success has been the partnership between public and private sectors and a strategy to support the growing agri-tech cluster (the BioSTL Coalition). Rarely is such close-knit collaboration seen – despite widespread appetites to build successful clusters. This is key to the success of the greater St Louis ecosystem.

As Missouri’s famous son, Mark Twain once said, “There are two types of people, those who accomplish things, and those who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”