Dr Pete Falloon will talk on the topic of What does climate change mean for the UK food system?

Speaker Biography

Dr Pete Falloon leads the Met Office’s Climate Service for Defra on Food, Farming and Natural Environment. Pete has over 25 years of experience in modelling environmental systems, particularly the impacts of climate and land use change on agriculture, water, and soils. Pete has been at the Met Office Hadley Centre since 2004 and led the Climate Impacts Modelling team from 2009-2019, and was the Met Office Science Directorate’s Change Manager from 2020-2023. He is a contributing author to the UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) and a member of the Global Food Security Programme’s Programme Coordination Group board and supported the UK government in the IPCC Working Group 2 approval phase as part of the UK delegation.

He has a BSc (Hons) in Environmental Science of the Earth and Atmosphere from the University of Reading, and worked on modelling pesticide fate in riverine systems during an MSc (Research) and part-time lectureship the University of Greenwich. Pete moved to Rothamsted Research in 1996, where he worked on modelling soil, climate and vegetation interactions for 8 years and was awarded a PhD from the University of Nottingham in 2001.

He has written numerous peer-reviewed papers and book chapters on soil carbon dynamics, land use change and the impacts of climate change, and given many invited and offered presentations both in the UK and internationally, and worked for, and led science teams delivering to a wide range of government, industry and research customers.

Pete is also Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol, and Sustainability Director at Food Drink Devon, which exists to promote quality, provenance and sustainability in Devon produce.