Peter W. B. Phillips
Senior AssociateDr. Phillips is professor of agricultural economics in a $1.1 million, peer-reviewed NSERC/SSHRC Chair in Managing Knowledge-based Agri-food Development at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. His current research program concentrates on issues related to intellectual property rights, market access and consumer acceptance of agricultural biotechnology products. He has collaborated with researchers in Canada, the US, Europe and Australia, has published extensively on issues of managing agri-food development and trade and has undertaken consultancy work for commodity groups, private research firms, the Canadian government and international agencies.
Dr. Phillips is active in a number of organizations involved in trade policy research. He is a founding member and Director of the Saskatchewan node of the Canadian Agri-food Trade Research Network, which involves agricultural economics faculty and researchers at the Universities of Guelph, Laval and Saskatchewan. He is a founding member of the International Consortia for Agricultural Biotechnology Research based in Rome and is a member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. As well, Dr. Phillips is a member of the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee.
In 1997-99, he was the Van Vliet Chair Professor of Agricultural Economics, during which he completed a two-year, multi-disciplinary research program entitled "Knowledge in Agriculture: the role of innovation in agri-food development," which produced a manuscript on the role of biotechnology in the global agri-food system, using canola as a case study.
Before joining the University, Phillips was a research economist and policy advisor in Canadian business and governmnet. Phillips has written extensively on economic and trade policy, including in 1990 a book entitled Wheat, Eruope and the GATT, which was translated into Japanese and reprinted in 1992.