Ken Baker

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Dr. Kenneth M. Baker is vice-Chairman of the Advisory Board of the World Agricultural Forum and is also known as Ken Baker.

Dr. Baker is now retired and has nearly 30 years' experienc3e in agriculture and related industries in Europe and the United States. Most recently, he was President and General Manager of the Public Affairs Consulting Agency, KMB Associates, located in Brussels and specializing in the affairs of the European Union. Prior to that, he was Director of Government Affairs for Europe and Africa for Monsanto, from which post he retired in 2002. He has also been Government Affairs Director for G.D. G.D. Searle & Company, the pharmaceutical company, until it was merged with Pfizer. One of Dr. Baker's most notable successes was guiding the approval of genetically-modified soybeans in the European Union, thus opening global trade on soybean commodities around the world for the new, more environmentally product. {[fact}}

Biography

Dr. Baker was educated at Ellerslie School and Penrose High School (now One Tree Hill College) at Auckland New Zealand. He obtained his Masters (1st Class Hons) and Ph.D degrees in Chemistry from the University of Auckland. From there went on to hold an ICI Post-Doctoral fellowship and a New Zealand Universities Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Chemistry at Cambridge University from 1968 to 1970 where he was also a Member of Emmanuel College and a University Teacher in Organic Chemistry. His mentors at Cambridge were Lord Todd, winner of the Nobel Prize winner in 1952 and Dr. Dudley Williams. His chosen area of study was mass spectrometry of nucleotides and he interacted frequently with the researchers at the Medical research Laboratory in Cambridge. Dr. Baker is also a graduate of the Advanced Business Management Programme of INSEAD, the European Business School at Fontainebleau, France.

Dr. Baker then in 1971 took up a post at the pharmaceuticals company Syntex, in California. and subsequently at the Mario Negri Institute in Milan, Italy.

Dr. Baker was instrumental in the founding of several industry trade and representative bodies in the European Union. The most notable of these are SAGB, EuropaBio and EUFIC (the European Food Information Council) and the Food and Agriculture Committee of the EU Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce.

Dr. Baker developed a keen familiarity with the European Commission and Government circles in Brussels, the European Union Member States and the United States Government in Washington. He has contributed often to the public debate on the role of economics and modern science and technology in agriculture through presentations and speeches to European and International Meetings.

Contact

Ken currently resides in Brussels, Belgium.