Around the world, at least a billion people are hungry or need better diets. The global population is projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050; UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and industry analysts believe we will need to increase food production by as much as 70 percent in order to feed everyone adequately, although a number of respected scientists have pointed out that, if waste and the causes of poverty are effectively addressed, production need not be ramped up by anywhere near this amount.

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Expanding a comparable argument, a Stanford University professor has said achieving that goal requires civilization to address issues including overconsumption through a bottom-up movement focused on agricultural, environmental and demographic planning. Professor Paul Ehrlich, a controversial environmentalist and biologist, whose 1968 book 'The Population Bomb' continues to divide opinion, this week declared that closing the gender gap is essential to achieving food security.

Ehrlich discussed his 'roadmap' to food security at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Meeting in Boston on Friday (15th February), where he said that ensuring women have equal rights to men across the world is the first major step on the road towards food security.

Although he has been criticised as an alarmist and for his views on 'overpopulation,' Ehrlich delivered his talk to a symposium on "Global Food Security in Relation to Climate, Population, Technology, and Earth Changes" and expressed hope for the future, so long as his conditions are met. He called for 'improved' agricultural practices, the replacement of fossil fuels and equal rights for women, which he said would "enlist more brainpower in finding food supply solutions and slow birth rates."

The professor said, "There is widespread agreement that the evolving food situation is becoming very serious. But virtually all such warnings, in my view, underestimate the potential impacts of climate disruption on the food system, the way the energy situation may negatively interact with producing enough food and the progressive ecological deterioration of the agricultural enterprise. Perhaps most important, virtually all analyses simply treat the need to feed an additional 2.5 billion people by 2050 as a given."

In line with his earlier warnings about population growth, which have remained a constant of his since the 1960s, Ehrlich continued that, "A program of improving the status of women everywhere and supplying all sexually active people with access to modern contraception and back-up abortion would be relatively quite cheap and would greatly reduce the numbers that must be fed."