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In June, I had the good fortune to attend the four-day Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) 2004 Annual International Conference and Exhibition at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. More than 17,000 industry leaders from 59 countries attended the conference, which featured 150 separate panels and a business forum with 200 company presentations.
I’m pleased to say that Missouri and the
St. Louis BioBelt were represented in exemplary fashion, thanks to the efforts of
Jennifer McMahon, Monsanto Co.; Jodi Krantz, Missouri Department of Economic Development; and Jim Alexander, RCGA vice president for business development. For the first time in the history of BIO, the Missouri delegation was unified in a separate, freestanding pavilion called, “Guiding Discovery in the Biosciences.”
In addition to the RCGA, the Missouri Department of Economic Development, Monsanto, Ameren, Centocor, Clayco Construction, Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, the Desco Group, Ikon Office Solutions, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, the Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise, the Center for Emerging Technologies, the St. Louis Science Center, the St. Louis Community College, the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute, and other institutions displayed their fine examples of education, health care and commercial successes in the world of biosciences.
Underlining the importance of plant and life sciences to the future of Missouri, Gov. Bob Holden was one of only nine governors to personally pitch their states’ bioscience assets. He was accompanied by some 67 St. Louis and Missouri business and industry leaders, including our own RCGA economic development team.
The work all of us do to promote and foster our many initiatives in plant and life sciences is crucial. Consider the report just completed by BIO and the Battelle Memorial Institute. Timed to coincide with the conference, the report confirms what many of us have long suspected: All 50 U.S. states—and scores of foreign governments—are working exceptionally hard to address the elements needed to support technology-based economies.
An earlier Brookings Institute national study ranked St. Louis as one of the four “emerging biotech regions in the country,” along with Ann Arbor/Detroit, Chicago and Houston.
Battelle documented that employment and other economic activity in the biosciences has grown dramatically over the past three years, and that states working hard to attract bioscience companies are targeting their efforts in sub-sectors—such as St. Louis’s BioBelt: The Center of Plant and Life Sciences.
The rewards are worth the effort. Battelle learned that more than 850,000 people in the United States are employed in the biosciences today. Moreover, these workers earn at least $18,600 more than the overall national average private-sector annual wage.
Battelle’s previous work in St. Louis showed that 390 biosciences firms, employing about 23,000 workers, existed in the region in 2000. The average yearly wage for these employees was $69,600—more than $30,000, or 75 percent, above the average salary in the region.
For jobs like these—in an industry with such unlimited potential—we should all be willing to go the extra mile.
RICHARD C.D. FLEMING
President and Chief Executive Officer
St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association
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