"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"
About this Quote
Peace, Borlaug suggests, is not a moral mood you can summon with slogans; it is a material condition you have to grow. The line pivots on a deliberate revision of an old maxim (the shadow of "If you want peace, prepare for war" hangs in the background). By swapping war for justice, then immediately adding bread, he refuses the comforting idea that ethics alone can stabilize societies. Justice is necessary, but empty stomachs will veto it.
The rhetoric works because it’s both blunt and disarmingly practical. "Cultivate justice" speaks in the language of ideals; "cultivate the fields" yanks you back into the dirt, labor, yield. The repetition of "cultivate" is the trick: it collapses the distance between politics and agriculture, treating both as ongoing work rather than one-time victories. Peace becomes something you manage, like soil fertility, not something you declare at a summit.
Subtext: hunger is a political accelerant. When food systems fail, grievances metastasize, demagogues gain oxygen, and conflict becomes a rational response to scarcity. Borlaug’s scientific worldview shows through in the conditional "otherwise": he’s not moralizing, he’s modeling cause and effect.
Context matters. As the agronomist most associated with the Green Revolution, Borlaug spent a career arguing that crop yields weren’t just a technical problem; they were geopolitical infrastructure. His point lands with an uncomfortable edge: human rights and redistribution are crucial, but without productivity and access to calories, "peace" is a luxury belief.
The rhetoric works because it’s both blunt and disarmingly practical. "Cultivate justice" speaks in the language of ideals; "cultivate the fields" yanks you back into the dirt, labor, yield. The repetition of "cultivate" is the trick: it collapses the distance between politics and agriculture, treating both as ongoing work rather than one-time victories. Peace becomes something you manage, like soil fertility, not something you declare at a summit.
Subtext: hunger is a political accelerant. When food systems fail, grievances metastasize, demagogues gain oxygen, and conflict becomes a rational response to scarcity. Borlaug’s scientific worldview shows through in the conditional "otherwise": he’s not moralizing, he’s modeling cause and effect.
Context matters. As the agronomist most associated with the Green Revolution, Borlaug spent a career arguing that crop yields weren’t just a technical problem; they were geopolitical infrastructure. His point lands with an uncomfortable edge: human rights and redistribution are crucial, but without productivity and access to calories, "peace" is a luxury belief.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
|---|---|
| Source | Norman E. Borlaug, Nobel Lecture "The Green Revolution, Peace and Humanity", Oslo, 1970 — contains the line about cultivating justice and fields for bread (see Nobel Prize transcript). |
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