M. S. Swaminathan Quotes

There is talk about the need for a second Green Revolution. However, such a revolution is nowhere in sight.

The Second Green Revolution, as the world's population grows to over 9 billion by 2050, is the new revolution we have to have to lift food production by another 75 percent.

It may be assumed as a fixed truth that the prosperity and riches of the farmer must depend on the prosperity and good national regulation of trade.

How we grow food has enormous effects on the environment - climate change as well as pollution of air, water, and soil.

There has been a great reduction in the cost of producing crops in some favored regions where steam-ploughs and steam-reaping, steam-threshing, and steam-sacking machines can be employed; but there has been no reduction in the cost of producing crops upon the ordinary American farm at all corresponding to the reduction in the price of the produce.

These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution

If we don't get sustainability right in agriculture first, it won't happen anywhere.

We don't need a War on Carbon. We need a new prosperity that can be shared by all while still respecting a multitude of real ecological limits - not just atmospheric gas concentrations, but topsoil depth, water supplies, toxic chemical concentrations, and the health of ecosystems, including the diversity of life they depend upon.

Technology has allowed us to have more drought-resistant crops. The spotty nature of drought, the spotty nature of rains can sometimes result in better yields than anticipated.

Modern agriculture has been accurately described as a way of turning oil into food. As the price of oil continues to rise, so will the price of food.

We have six-and-a-half-billion people on the planet, going rapidly towards seven. We're going to need a lot of inventiveness about how we use water and grow crops.

The Prime Minister of India, at a meeting that I co-chaired a few months ago, stated that any development that is not sustainable is not development.

Our farmers and ranchers have never faced as many problems as they do today with drought, range fires, high gas prices and an ever tightening budget on agriculture subsidies.

It is obvious that the greatest and most important service that is required of our agriculture under existing conditions is an enlarged production of the staple food crops.

The production of natural resources in agriculture, forestry and fisheries, stable natural hydrological cycles, fertile soils, a balanced climate and numerous other vital ecosystem services can only be permanently secured through the protection and sustainable use of biological diversity.

I said that if I were an industrialist or entrepreneur, I would invest in agriculture-based enterprises, for there is so much that can be done in manufacturing, in food preservation.

In fact, because of their connection to the land, farmers do more to protect and preserve our environment than almost anyone else. They are some of the best environmentalists around.

Agriculture looks different today - our farmers are using GPS and you can monitor your irrigation systems over the Internet.

The history of American agriculture suggests that you can have transformation without a master plan, without knowing all the answers up front.

I came to all the realizations about sustainability and biodiversity because I fell in love with the way food tastes. That was it. And because I was looking for that taste I feel at the doorsteps of the organic, local, sustainable farmers, dairy people and fisherman.

The Industrial Revolution did not spell the end of agriculture, or even the end of food production, in the United States. It just meant that a much smaller percentage of Americans had to work on farms to feed the population.

When it comes to agriculture, there's no such thing as a free market.

We don't pay miners not to mine, and we shouldn't pay farmers not to farm.

The Green Revolution is neither.

Why, when India's agricultural products are among the cheapest in the world despite a low yield per hectare, are we not able to double the production and export the products abroad?