It is a great honor to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, in recognition of my work to feed a hungry world. I thank members of Congress for giving me an opportunity to comment on the challenges and complexities of feeding a world of 10 billion people who I expect will be living on the planet Earth sometime this century.

When I was born--in 1914--there were only 1.6 billion people on Earth. Today, we are 6.5 billion and growing by 80 million per year. The task of feeding this growing population has been made more complex, since agriculture is now being asked not only to produce food, feed and fiber, but also raw materials for bio-fuels. Thus, there is no room for complacency for those of us working on the food front.

I am now in my 63rd year of continuous involvement in agricultural research and production in low-income, food-deficit developing countries. I have worked with many scientists, political leaders, and farmers to transform food production systems. Any achievements I have made have been possible through my participation in this army of hunger fighters. There are too many to name, but you know who you are. I thank you for your dedication and assistance all of these years. I also thank my family, and my late wife Margaret, for the understanding and unselfish support you have given me

The Green Revolution was a great historic success. In 1960, perhaps 60 percent of the world's people felt hunger during some portion of the year. By the year 2000, the proportion of hungry in the world had dropped to 14 percent of the total population. Still, this figure translated to 850 million men, women and children who lacked sufficient calories and protein to grow strong and healthy bodies. Thus, despite the successes of the Green Revolution, the battle to ensure food security for hundreds of millions of miserably poor people is far from won.