Everything else can wait, agriculture can’t.

To this day, I enjoy nature, the luxury of undisturbed wilderness, forests, mountains, lakes, rivers and deserts and their wildlife. But I also know that the greatest danger to their perpetuity is the pressure of human population.

Everything else can wait, agriculture can’t.

We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don't see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.

I am but one member of a vast team made up of many organizations, officials, thousands of scientists, and millions of farmers - mostly small and humble - who for many years have been fighting a quiet, oftentimes losing war on the food production front.

Man's survival, from the time of Adam and Eve until the invention of agriculture, must have been precarious because of his inability to ensure his food supply.

Plant diseases, drought, desolation, despair were recurrent catastrophes during the ages - and the ancient remedies: supplications to supernatural spirits or gods.