In a conclave suffused with both urgency and idealism, the late Professor M.S. Swaminathan’s indelible legacy as the architect of India’s Green Revolution was invoked not as a relic of past achievement, but as a clarion call to reimagine agriculture for an imperilled planet. Convened under the auspices of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), the gathering brought together a constellation of global thinkers, policy architects, and scientific innovators to interrogate the promise and perils of what they termed the “Evergreen Revolution 2.0,” where Biohappiness—rooted in the equitable sharing of the fruits of science—must cohabit with the disruptive, and at times contentious, forces of bioinnovation.

Opening the deliberations, S. Mahalingam, Trustee of MSSRF, eschewed any temptation towards self-congratulation. He acknowledged with candour that the previous day’s discussions had surfaced multiple impediments to implementing Biohappiness at scale. Yet, he found cause for optimism in the striking presentations on the application of artificial intelligence to agriculture, remarking that productivity gains, far from being a mere economic aspiration, were the sine qua non of any enduring, ecologically consonant revolution in farming. His words framed the day’s discourse as a quest for that elusive equilibrium between technological acceleration and environmental stewardship.

For Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Co-Chair of the Board of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center and Emeritus Librarian of Alexandria, the proceedings carried a deeply personal resonance. In a world already teetering on the precipice of environmental and humanitarian crises, Dr. Ismail Serageldin’s words carried the gravitas of both urgency and vision. Global greenhouse gas emissions stand at a staggering 54 gigatons in 2024, with fossil fuels accounting for 82 percent of that total. Freshwater—only 2.5 percent of all the world’s water—is being squandered at rates our aquifers cannot replenish, while agriculture dominates global water withdrawals, consuming nearly 70 percent of the total. Rain patterns have become anarchic, delivering drought and deluge with equal caprice, dismantling livelihoods, and dragging millions back into the abyss of extreme poverty and hunger.

The grim ledger continues: two billion people deprived of safe drinking water; 45 percent without basic sanitation; 122 million forcibly displaced in 2024 alone. Inequality—he observed—stalks humanity not merely in income and wealth, but in access to health, education, and the dignities of opportunity. Agriculture itself is an ambivalent actor: a lifeline for billions, yet responsible for 23 percent of global GHG emissions. Methane accounts for 16 percent of that toll, carbon dioxide for 65 percent, with the remainder a toxic miscellany.

But Serageldin, refuses to consign the sector to the role of perpetual villain. “With science and precision agriculture, we can move the food and agriculture sector from being part of the problem to being part of the solution,” he declared, sketching a future where farms become nature’s own carbon capture and sequestration systems. The transformation he envisions would not merely cut emissions—it would invert agriculture’s climate calculus, turning fields and forests into planetary lungs.

The stakes are daunting: global food production must rise by 40 percent by 2030, and by 70 percent by 2050—even as resources contract. Yet science offers its armamentarium: engineered bacteria, protein folding, chimeric plants, lab-grown meat. For Serageldin, these are not speculative curiosities but essential instruments in agriculture’s reinvention. In his formulation, the sector must cease to be an extractive enterprise and instead become a regenerative covenant between humankind and the biosphere—a compact to feed the world without defiling it.

If Serageldin’s words cast the shadow of climate constraints, Dr. S. Mahendra Dev, Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India, illuminated the path towards resilience and equity. He extolled the virtues of crop diversification as a lever for enhancing farm incomes, advocated productivity maximisation with judicious input use, and cautioned against allowing agriculture and dairy to buckle under the pressure of arbitrary tariff regimes. He drew attention to the ecological imperatives of conservation farming, integrated pest management, and integrated nutrient supply systems as lodestars for policy.

Lamenting the $800 billion of global agricultural support that is overwhelmingly skewed towards market-distorting, unsustainable practices, he urged the repurposing of such resources towards research, development, and green innovation. Echoing Dr. Swaminathan’s own advocacy, he emphasised climate-resilient crops—millets and pulses foremost among them—as critical bulwarks against the triple scourge of calorie deprivation, micronutrient deficiency, and protein insufficiency. His statistical litany, drawn from FAO data, was sobering: 8.2 per cent of the world’s population remains undernourished, 23.2 per cent of children suffer stunting, obesity afflicts 15.8 per cent of humanity, and healthy diets remain prohibitively costly for millions. Yet, he pointed to exemplars—from Benin and Mozambique to Vietnam and Brazil—where coherent food systems reform, undergirded by cross-ministerial coordination, has wrought tangible change.

It was, however, Dr. Sheila Obim, Executive Director of the Alliance for Science in Nairobi, who posed the gathering’s most disquieting and thought-provoking query: can bioinnovation and Biohappiness truly co-exist? In her telling, Africa’s agrarian future is being shaped in laboratories and fields alike, where genetically modified crops such as Bt cowpea, Bt brinjal, golden rice, banana, cassava, and late blight-resistant potato—borne of GMO, precision breeding, and gene-drive technologies—are poised for deployment across an arc of nations from Nigeria and Ghana to the Philippines and Indonesia.

Yet she offered an unflinching appraisal of their limited success to date, insisting that scientific ingenuity must be conjoined with public trust, enabling policy reform, and equitable access if Africa is to feed itself with dignity and resilience. She chronicled the training of over 240 global fellows in agricultural biotechnology advocacy, and highlighted Nigeria’s own embrace of Biohappiness as a strategy encompassing food and nutrition security, climate mitigation, public health, and energy equity—reminding the audience that energy remains the fulcrum upon which all solutions pivot.

Sheila’s vision of bioinnovation was firmly tethered to first principles: ecological restoration, agro-biodiversity, and regenerative farming as non-negotiable foundations. Indigenous knowledge holders, women cultivators, and youth innovators, she insisted, are not peripheral stakeholders but central repositories of ecological wisdom and social resilience.

She called for a pluralistic model of innovation, where technologies are not imposed from on high but co-created in partnership with communities. In a flourish that blended technological evangelism with cultural diplomacy, she unveiled her aspiration for a “Netflix for Science”—a global science communication platform designed to liberate knowledge from the cloisters of academia and gift it to the world, with Africa as the benefactor rather than the beneficiary. “Let science not be restricted to classrooms,” she urged, in what may yet become a rallying cry for a generation.

By the day’s close, the contours of a shared agenda had emerged. The realisation of an Evergreen Revolution 2.0 would require more than the sterile transfer of technology; it would demand an architecture of trust, the reorientation of fiscal incentives towards sustainability, and the forging of solidarities that traverse the Global South. Above all, it would require the moral imagination to marry the fruits of bioinnovation with the equitable ethos of Biohappiness, ensuring that the science which feeds the world also heals it. In that vision, the legacy of Dr. M.S. Swaminathan is not merely preserved—it is propelled forward.