Professor M.S. Swaminathan has been confirmed as a keynote speaker for the World Congress on Agrofroestry 2014. Professor Swaminathan is known as the 'Father of the Green Revolution in India' for his leadership and success in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat in India. He is the founder and Chair of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. His vision is to rid the world of hunger and poverty. Professor Swaminathan is an advocate of moving India to sustainable development, especially using environmentally sustainable agriculture, sustainable food security and the preservation of biodiversity. This he calls an 'evergreen revolution', which will increase productivity in perpetuity without causing ecological damage.

The 'evergreen revolution' is closely tied to the concept of 'Evergreen Agriculture', where trees that fix nitrogen in their root, the so-called 'fertilizer trees' are integrated into annual food crop and livestock systems, sustaining a green cover on the land throughout the year. It bolsters nutrient supply through nitrogen fixation and nutrient cycling, increases direct production of food, fodder, fuel, and fibre, and provides additional income to farmers from tree products.

Swaminathan is a strong advocate of the use of agroforestry in developing country agriculture. He has been quoted as saying "Agroforestry is a science by itself and has to maintain its identity. And forestry helps us from a green revolution to an evergreen revolution." He has stressed the importance of agroforestry in overcoming nutritional challenges and highlighted its many benefits. "We need to reinvent agriculture in a sustainable and affordable way so that it can adapt to climate change and reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases. Novel solutions and technological advances must be married with ecological thinking to drive a truly sustainable agricultural revolution".

"Successful examples of evergreen agriculture … urgently need further research and scaling up to create a real evergreen revolution," he said.