With decades of collaborative research on microbiology, plant biochemistry, and molecular biology since graduating with a PhD from the University of WA in 1965, Kennedy has claimed three main interests: biological nitrogen fixation, risk management of pesticides, and action in ecosystems. He was awarded a DSc(Agric) by the University of WA in 1992 for a thesis entitled “The metabolism of inorganic nitrogen and its environmental effects”. International experience includes invitations to deliver lectures or key-note papers at international symposia in Egypt, China, Russia, Germany, Pakistan, Italy, Belgium, USA, Indonesia, France, Vietnam, India, Belgium, Hungary, and Sarawak, Malaysia; direction of an International Development Program (IDP) Linkage between Shandong University (Biological Nitrogen Fixation), Jinan in China and the University of Sydney and separate ARC-funded collaborative research programs on BNF with the Institut Pasteur in Paris (early 1990s) and the University of Knoxville (ORNL) (2007–2009). In Vietnam and Indonesia, he has directed major ACIAR and AusAID-funded projects on rapid ELISA immunotests for pesticides and mycotoxins and on plant growth-promoting inoculant biofertilisers in Vietnam and Sri Lanka, which have been funded since 1999. The major goal of all this work has been to help farmers to help themselves, guarding the planetary interest.