The Green Revolution, Peace, and Humanity (Nobel Lecture)
Delivered in Oslo on December 11, 1970, upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for developing high-yielding, disease-resistant wheat varieties that saved over a billion lives.
Full Transcript
Your Majesty, Members of the Nobel Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am a scientist, not a politician. I have spent my life in the dusty research fields of Mexico, India, and Pakistan working with high-yielding semi-dwarf wheat strains.
When the Nobel Committee awarded me the Peace Prize, it recognized that food is the moral right of all who are born into this world.
The Green Revolution was not a single miracle, but a sustained application of agricultural science: disease-resistant crop breeding, synthetic fertilizers, and modernized irrigation.
You cannot build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery. If you want peace, cultivate justice—and cultivate the soil.
Technological progress has bought us a window of time—perhaps a few decades—to address global population growth and resource distribution. We must use that time wisely.
Defining Key Excerpts
"Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world."
"You cannot build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery."
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