Lindsay Falvey

Personal life

Falvey was born in Melbourne, Australia of Kenneth Robert Leslie Falvey and Dorothy Elizabeth Falvey (née Christopher). He has one brother Russell Leslie Falvey. From 1971 to 2002, Falvey was married to Janice Patricia Daly; they have two sons, Leslie Kenneth Falvey and Christopher John Falvey. In March 2006 he married Simone Lucie Behr (Bernhardt), an Alsatian ethnologist of the Council of Europe. He attended Deepdene State School and Balwyn High School, La Trobe University and the University of Queensland.

Biography

During his initial degree, he took various in-term and vacation jobs, including labouring and mustering cattle at Douglas-Daly Experiment Station in the Northern Territory of Australia, while also taking a Methodist Local Preaching qualification with The Reverend Dr. A. Harold Wood at Deepdene Methodist Church. He worked for the Federal Government in Darwin, from where he conducted research and other work on the Douglas-Daly Experiment Station for five years. Disrupted by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve of 1974, Falvey entered international development as suited his perceived vocation to research livestock as an alternative to opium production in the northern Thailand highlands, which uncovered a primary sodium deficiency through much of the region from research that integrated sociological, economic and technical parameters. After five years Falvey joined a small commercial cooperative delivering international aid for rural development which became known as MPW Australia, of which he soon became Managing Director. With contributions from his professional colleagues, MPW grew into a sizable consulting company and was eventually purchased by the stock-exchange-listed Coffey International to become Coffey-MPW, of which he was Managing Director until 1993. During this consulting period, he maintained an active academic interest and published regularly in scientific journals, while also working in some 20 countries. His first books, on 'Cattle in northern Thailand' and 'Working Animals' were published in this period.

In 1995, he was invited by the University of Melbourne to assume the role of Dean of a combined faculty of eight campuses with the task of merging the six colleges of the Victorian College of Agriculture and Horticulture with the university's ongoing departments related to agriculture and forestry. After completing the merger task and setting in place the adjustments required by the merger, he stepped down as Dean while retaining the Chair of Agriculture. Falvey was awarded a higher doctorate of agricultural science by the University of Melbourne in 2004 for a 1,500 page combined selection from his books and papers which revealed a new evolving philosophy of international agricultural development over some thirty years.

He is a Foundation Director of Hassad Australia, Board Chair of the International Livestock Research Institute, Chair of the Selection Panel for the World Prize in International Integrated Development, and assists Thaksin University in Songkhla Thailand.

Works

Falvey's most significant writing began during his term as Dean. An evolution of thought may be discerned in his acclaimed work on Thai Agriculture, which indicates the influence of Buddhism-related philosophy in the agriculture of developing nations, a theme expanded in his subsequent book 'Sustainability Elusive or Illusory' and his 2005 text 'Agriculture and Religion: Sustainability in Christianity and Buddhism.

Falvey presents essential agriculture and food as conceptually different from non-basic goods and hence requiring different mindsets for development planning and economic policy. He also addresses scriptural works, a basis for his role with the Asian Agri-History Foundation (India).

List of works

Publications

20 books: updated list and other details at http://profdrlindsayfalvey.yolasite.com/resources/bio.pdf