By 2050, there are going to be
almost 10 billion of us living on this planet.
And all of us will need food to survive.
If we don't change anything and we will go on
in the way we are now consuming our food,
then the next 40 years,
we need to produce as much food as we did
over the last 8,000 years.
And that's a huge challenge.
Agriculture is the largest source
of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.
And, along with climate change and urbanization,
the resources that we need to feed everyone,
things like space and water,
are becoming harder to find.
That's why scientists and farmers across the world
are finding new ways to help us and our planet thrive.
So you're now in the central area
of the Netherlands.
And within this area we have many different institutes
and industries that are focusing
on the big challenges in food.
We like to study things in nature,
try to learn from things in nature,
and try to transfer this into solutions
that can improve the quality of life of humankind.
Wageningen University is known
as the Silicon Valley of agriculture.
Students and researchers from more than 100 countries
work here in vast greenhouses and labs
to determine the future of our food and how we'll grow it.
The Green Revolution in the 20th century
started by a guy named Borlaug
and he was a plant breeder.
And what I like about the story
is that the guy got the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Not for science, but for peace.
And the reason was that he came up
with new cultivars of wheat
that were able to produce more per plant.
And, in that way, he could offer a solution
for the hunger that was quite important
at that time in Asia and in Africa.
The bad thing was, of course, that these new cultivars
also needed a lot of fertilizers,
a lot of pesticides.
And that's the reason why I think that we need
a new Green Revolution.
We need to produce more per square meter,
but at the same time
we need to use less fertilizer, less energy, less water.
So, more with less and better
is really a summary of our research programs.
Along with the driverless tractors
and agroforestry being developed here
at the university's research farm,
the next Green Revolution could rely on optimizing
the most fundamental process in every plant, photosynthesis.
All life depends, now, on photosynthesis.
So, it's an essential building block of life.
For a long time,
people thought this could not be changed anymore.
They thought this is a fixed thing.
It already exist for about 2 billion years,
so very long time,
and people thought the evolution
would have taken care of this.
And now it looks like it's not.
The team created a robot filled with cameras
that can image plants while they photosynthesize
using a property called chlorophyll fluorescence.
By examining photosynthesis at the DNA level,
they identified natural genetic variations
in the way plants handle light.
That data can be used to breed crops
which are almost 50% better at the process.
Not only could that double yields,
but the optimized plants will be more efficient
with resources like water and nutrients in the soil.
So, what the Green Revolution taught us
how by changing the architecture of plants,
we could harvest more of the plant
and that's probably saved humanity from a lot of trouble.
Now, this new step in looking at photosynthesis
could mean the same.
So, if we can improve
with only a few percentages photosynthesis,
we would also be able to improve plant productivity.
And if you can do that in a sustainable and durable way
for a long time and making it available to a lot of people,
by just increasing one trait,
then would give us a tremendous boost forwards.
On the other side of the world in China,
improving food production to feed its 1.4 billion people
is already an urgent problem.
This small-scale peasant economy
means lower production at a higher cost.
And, combined with food safety
and sustainability challenges, this creates major problems
for the country's agriculture industry.
Dr. Li Shaohua is the research director
at Sanan Sino-Science, a joint venture between
the Chinese Academy of Science and a local LED maker.
In 2016, they built this factory
made up of eight three-story buildings
to grow medicinal plants and vegetables.
This one building covers just under an acre of land
but provides 1.8 tons of produce every single day.
Their secret?
A modular planting system
made up of one-meter square boards
which contain lighting and storage for a nutrient solution.
The boards easily slot together
and can be replaced quickly if they break.
There's no need for pesticides
and the cooling system recycles evaporated water
back to the plants
so that some use over 18 times less
than if they were grown in a field.
For now, most of the vegetables are sold
to local supermarkets across Fujian Province
and one bag of lettuce costs 11 times more
than others on the shelf.
But the price is likely to get lower
as the technology becomes more widespread.
Solving problems in food production
will also mean that you are working on solving issues
that affects the whole Earth.
It's a combination of feeling responsible
for the environment
and feeling responsible for feeding the growing population.