Meanwhile, we're living in a different environment from the time of the first Green Revolution. After all, why would evolution have not optimized such an important process? But Long points out that evolution optimizes for survival and reproduction, not the maximum output of the seeds and fruits humans eat. Historically, the prevailing wisdom has always been that photosynthesis couldn't be made more efficient. We know that in crop plants this process is not actually very efficient, and we now understand enough about the process that can start to intervene and genetically improve its efficiency.' 'Photosynthesis is the process that converts sunlight energy and carbon dioxide into the substance of a plant, so it's basically the source, directly or indirectly, of all of our food. 'The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says that we're going to need 70 percent more food by 2050, and with current rates of crop improvement we're not going to get there,' says Stephen Long, Director of The RIPE Project, which aims to spur a second Green Revolution by engineering crops so that they're able to photosynthesise more efficiently. But the lives of more than a billion people were saved by a 'Green Revolution'–the spread of techniques like irrigation, hybridized seeds, and human-made fertilizers and pesticides from industrialized countries to the developing world. A growling global population was butting up against the limits of the food supply, with disastrous consequences. In the middle of the 20th Century, many parts of the world were on the brink of famine.

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