Stanford University
Encina Hall, E404
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

wpfalcon@stanford.edu
(650) 723-6367 (voice)
(650650) 725-1992 (fax)

Expertise
biotechnology; orphan crops; food security; food and agricultural policy in developing countries, particularly Indonesia and Mexico; economic development

Walter Falcon is deputy director of the Program on Food Security and the Environment, former director of FSI, and the Farnsworth Professor of International Agricultural Policy, emeritus. He specializes in agricultural policy in developing countries, and has considerable research experience as an analyst and consultant in international economic and environmental policy. His current research focuses on agricultural decision-making in Indonesia and Mexico, and on biotechnology. He has consulted for numerous international organizations and has been a trustee of Winrock International and chairman of the board of the International Rice Research Institute.

Prior to becoming deputy director of FSE, Falcon was a founding co-director of the Center for Environmental Science and Policy in 1998, and a director of FSI from 1991-1998. He was senior associate dean for the social sciences at Stanford, as well as a member of the university's faculty senate and advisory board. In 1972 he joined the Stanford Food Research Institute, where he was professor of economics and director until 1991. For the previous ten years, he was on the faculty at Harvard University.

He served on the Presidential Commission on World Hunger from 1978 to 1980, and served as chairman of the board of the International Corn and Wheat Improvement Center from 1996 to 2001. He was named a fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association in 1990, and became a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1991. In 1992, he was awarded the prestigious Bintang Jasa Utama medal of merit by the government of Indonesia, for his 25 years of assistance with that country's development. His recent co-authored papers have analyzed the effects of El Nino on Indonesian agriculture, the effects of reforms in Mexican agriculture, and the effects of modern biotechnology on plant genetic resources in developing countries. He received a BS in agricultural economics from Iowa State University, and an MA and PhD in economics from Harvard University.