ST. LOUIS — The seed to promote regional expansion of biotechnology-related research and businesses for the “Gateway City” and bi-state area was first planted 25 years ago and has since turned into a bumper crop that has reached the farm.
The St. Louis BioBelt Plant and Life Science Strategy promoted economic and scientific development in the greater metropolitan area and beyond through the research and development business opportunities in the sciences.
Existing companies such as then-Monsanto, Sigma Aldrich and Bunge were there at the beginning, as were the Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise, Center for Emerging Technologies and Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, among others.
Robb Fraley, former executive vice president and chief technology officer at Monsanto, said the progress in plant and life sciences space over the last two to three decades has been remarkable.
“If you think about the last 30 years, the advances in biology and the advances in digital science are arguably two of the most important scientific advances in the history of the world. And when you think it at the biology level today, as we’re improving crops and as we’re breeding livestock we’re literally able to do it gene by gene and with tools like gene editing and CRISPR literally base pair by base pair,” Fraley said in a recent Danforth Plant Science Center-hosted webinar.
“We have an amazing toolkit to continue to improve the productivity, yield, safety and nutrition of our food supply.”
Reaching Ag
Agriculture was one of the last major industries to become digitalized around the world.
“We’ve seen the impact of digital science in the pharmaceutical world, in the communications world, but now all of our farming decisions, our input decisions, our understanding of complex data sets of the soil and the atmosphere are all able to be managed with the tools,” Fraley noted.
“I used to think we farm field by field or farm by farm. Today, we literally farm foot by foot and plant by plant and it’s amazing to have that type of data capability with the advances in the sensors and other systems and imagery technology to give us that insight.”
Accompanying the science in the region, a support infrastructure of startup companies has been built with increasing financial support in the venture capital community.
“Now we have the opportunity to really bring that together with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the efforts that are going on to position science to a new level. And in many ways I see that as the link between the advances in biology and the digital advances because position, location is what it’s all about,” Fraley continued.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to study the unique relationship between the plant and its nearby soil or you’re trying to study the movement of a disease through contact tracing and the population or using it to monitor the development and spread of a new pest.
“These tools really amplify the strengths that the region has already built up. It also brings in the manufacturing and supply community to support both the biological and the digital advances in a way that’s never been possible before.
“I see this as a major opportunity and one that can really both unify and amplify the capabilities of the region and what we’ve already built. I see that as a major breakthrough for the future.”
Connecting With Farmers
While technology has reached most farmsteads, there still is a disconnect at times between the farmer and innovator. Fraley was asked what could be done better to connect the two.
Fraley has the unique perspective of both a farmer and innovator role.
He grew up on a small family farm near Hoopeston, Illinois. He helped his dad farm a few hundred acres until he enrolled at the University of Illinois to begin his own career path that led to his development of the first genetically modified crops. Through his work he’s also had the opportunity to meet hundreds of farmers in the United States and around the world.
“My perspective on farmers is first of all they’re very smart business people. You can’t fool a farmer. You have to bring them tools and innovations that really work and provide benefit. They know their costs. They know their farming operations. They know their land better than anybody,” Fraley said.
“Farmers are also the ultimate conservationists, the ultimate stewards of the land. Still today 95% of the farms in this country are family owned, and the owners of those farms and farming operations want nothing more than to have their children and their descendents take over those operations, and so they’re very careful about their environmental and their stewardship decisions.”
Innovators
Fraley added that farmers are incredible innovators.
“A lot of the practices that they developed get adopted and spread, they get adopted by companies and other growers,” he said.
“So, I think that the challenge is not so much with the farmers. In fact, as we look over the last few years the farming community has really adopted a lot of these tools at a tremendous rate. Farmers will adopt these tools as long as they provide benefit to the environment, benefit economically. They’re aligned clearly with the need to evolve and see consumer demand.”
When Fraley’s grandfather farmed, half of the Illinois population were farmers. Less than 1% of the population farms today.
“We’ve seen incredible evolution of our farming system and farming practices and yet that 1% is now meeting the food demand and the needs for not only the citizens in this country, but people around the world. It’s been a remarkable example of flexibility and adoption and I think we can count on them to do that as we go into the future,” Fraley noted.
“Meeting the demand for food security is still relevant. By 2050 our planet will be joined by another 2 billion-plus people. That will create challenges. We know that consumer choice and consumer voice is important.”
Strength In Diversity
Diversity and resilience are the strengths of a U.S. agriculture production system with multiple types of production systems.
“We have organic production systems. We have commodity production systems. There are farmers where one side of their farm is organic agriculture and the next is large scale farming production. So, I think we’re very flexible and are blessed with the fact that one of our strengths of our system is not only the coexistence of multiple production systems, but that they’re very complementary and that diversity is a real strength,” Fraley said.
“I don’t see a future where there’s going to be one system or another. I think the future is going to be very diverse, complementary systems that meet consumer demand, meet the demand for safe low cost food, meet the demand for increasing changes in consumer preferences and the use of plant materials and plant protein in a variety of food and industrial applications in the future.
“What’s exciting is the science that we now have. We’ve seen breeding become driven at a molecular scale, the advent of the GMO technology, now the next evolution with the gene editing tools. The power of those tools is broad adoption and accessibility by scientists around the world.”
With advances in technology comes the vital connection through communication with farmers — the end-users. Fraley believes the biggest challenge going forward is how innovators communicate to the science.
“It takes great science to create great products, but if it’s not accompanied by an equivalent effort on bringing the public and the decision makers and regulators on board, that science by itself is insufficient. That’s true whether you’re talking about vaccines, policies on climate change or whether you’re talking GMOs. We need to understand that communication is part of the game,” he said.
“It’s everyone’s responsibility as part of ag food chain to communicate around the importance of innovation and science.”