After a Doctor of Philosophy from Lincoln College (awarded through Canterbury University due to Lincoln"s status at the time) Edmeades worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries at Ruakura and then AgResearch after the 1992 reorganisation which created Crown Research Institutes.
He was involved in high profile litigation in relation to the effectiveness of the Maxicrop brand of fertilizer. He left in 1996 and now runs his own consultancy, agKnowledge Limited.
In 1989, while working for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Edmeades appeared on the television show FairGo expressing the view that seaweed-based Maxicrop didn"t work. Legal action was initiated by Maxicrop"s New Zealand distributor, the Bell-Booth Group.
In Bell-Booth Group Limited v Attorney-General the Court of Appeal found for MAF and FairGo after "the country"s longest civil court case.".
