Access to food and water are included among the fundamental rights in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet over one billion people on the Earth have no access to clean water and suffer from malnutrition. Scarcity of food is the cause of the largest number of deaths in the world from illness, while the struggle to control natural sources of clean water is one of the major causes of armed conflicts. On the other hand, the wealthy nations in the world, which represent only a small part of humanity, have to address the other side of the coin of malnutrition: excess food and the rise in obesity, now a thoroughgoing epidemic with dramatic consequences for health. With the rising world population, the solution to these problems and a more balanced redistribution of food resources are not only a moral imperative but the only road to sustainable development and worldwide security. Science and technology, if used wisely, can make fundamental contributions to solving these problems and to guiding the implementation of solutions to ensure everyone has sufficient food and clean water. These are the themes in the tenth edition of the Future of Science World Conference, promoted by the Fondazione Umberto Veronesi, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and the Fondazione Tronchetti Provera. The speakers, experts from various different fields, will tackle a broad raft of issues: climatic change and desertification, sustainable agriculture, the exponential rise in animal-origin food consumption and related pathologies (e.g. diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease) food security and health, genetic engineering and plants, and various economic, ethical and political implications.