We must recognize the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life. For a decent and humane life, we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing, and effective and compassionate medical care.
Unless there is one master gene for yield, which I'm guessing there is not, engineering for yield will be very complex. It may happen eventually, but through the coming decades, we must assume that gene engineering will not be the answer to the world's food problems.
The lack of roads in Africa greatly hinders agriculture, education, and development.
Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history.
Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists.
Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the 'Population Monster.'
Therefore I feel that the aforementioned guiding principle must be modified to read: If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace.
Central African farmers don't have any animal power because sleeping sickness kills all the animals - cattle, the horses, the burros and the mules. So draft animals don't exist, and farming is all by hand, and the hand tools are hoes and machetes.
When wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the field, you can hear the beards of the wheat rubbing together. They sound like the pine needles in a forest. It is a sweet, whispering music that once you hear, you never forget.
We will be guilty of criminal negligence, without extenuation, if we permit future famines.
When the Nobel Peace Prize Committee designated me the recipient of the 1970 award for my contribution to the 'green revolution,' they were in effect, I believe, selecting an individual to symbolize the vital role of agriculture and food production in a world that is hungry, both for bread and for peace.
If people want to believe that the organic food has better nutritive value, it's up to them to make that foolish decision. But there's absolutely no research that shows that organic foods provide better nutrition.
If some consumers believe that it's better from the point of view of their health to have organic food, God bless them. Let them buy it. Let them pay a bit more.
For, behind the scenes, halfway around the world in Mexico, were two decades of aggressive research on wheat that not only enabled Mexico to become self-sufficient with respect to wheat production but also paved the way to rapid increase in its production in other countries.
Pricing water delivery closer to its real costs is a necessary step to improving use efficiency.
Clearly, we need to rethink our attitudes about water and move away from thinking of it as nearly a free good and a God-given right.
It's amazing how often campaigners in rich countries think poor people don't get backache.
In my Nobel lecture, I suggested we had until the year 2000 to tame the population monster, and then food shortages would take us under. Now I believe we have a little longer.
Supplying food to sub-Saharan African countries is made very complex because of a lack of infrastructure.
Yet food is something that is taken for granted by most world leaders despite the fact that more than half of the population of the world is hungry.
