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.