Alan Spedding was born on a Lancashire dairy farm and graduated from Nottingham University. He worked for the Southern Counties Beef Recording Society performance recording and costing beef cattle, then with the Beef Recording Association and the Meat and Livestock Commission with Ken Baker eventually running the Beef Demonstration Unit at Stoneleigh. During this period he was Chairman of BIAC,

After the Beef Unit closed he moved to the Royal Agricultural Society of England where he edited their Journal and ran their conference programme. On his retirement he started RuSource with Revd Gordon Gatward at the Arthur Rank Centre to provide farming and rural information, firstly for rural clergy and then for the wider farming and rural community. He is now editor of The Source for Soc-Ag and the National Libraries for Agri-Food. In his spare time he rides his bike round North Buckinghamshire and runs U3A Book and Jazz Groups.