Veggie Grower to Produce Biopharmaceuticals

Chris Beytes

He’s not quite a greenhouse grower, but Dave Roeser is a veggie grower who’s giving biopharmaceuticals a go. Dave, who operates Garden Fresh Farms, an aquaponics facility in Maplewood, Minnesota, plans to build a new facility for his hydroponic veggies and will convert his current location into a “biological drug factory,” as one newspaper report put it. He’ll form a new company, MnPharm, to produce vaccines in tobacco plants.

Dave, a retired Hewlett-Packard controller, has been growing vegetables in an aquaponic system since the mid-2000s. He’s using a warehouse equipped with vertical rotating cylinders with lights running down the center. Plants (lettuce, basil and oregano) face inward toward the lights.

So it’s not a greenhouse. But it is basic plant production. And he doesn’t have a pharmaceutical-grade processing facility (yet).

As an aside, MnPharm is one of Minnesota’s first PBCs, or Public Benefit Corporations. It’s a new corporate designation that’s a cross between a non-profit and for-profit business. PBCs are charged with making money AND working toward specific social goals. That will allow MnPharm to work on vaccines that aren’t necessarily the most profitable. GT