David Morley, president and CEO of UNICEF, opened the McGill Global Food Security Conference with a moment of silence commemorating those killed in a bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Oct. 4; a stark reminder of the everyday dangers of life in the region. The death toll from the bombing has risen to close to 100. The area is also experiencing a famine which threatens the lives of 12 million people.

“Let us all remember … A bomb exploded outside the Ministry of Education in Mogadishu, in Somalia, today,” Morley said. “Parents and children had been lined up, waiting to get their test results from school. This illustrates some of what we’re having to deal with today in the Horn of Africa.”

The fourth annual Global Food Security Conference on Oct. 4 hosted a variety of round tables on subjects such as food price volatility, and—a new addition this year—a student-led panel on grassroots action and challenges to aid.  Morley, no stranger to global food crises, shared some of his experiences with the audience on Tuesday, drawing heavily on UNICEF’s efforts in Somalia this past summer. According to Morley, global food production, which continues to rise, has been more than able to keep up with global demand, but distribution is still a big problem.

He also illustrated some of the lesser-known threats to food security, such as infrastructure in the developing world, which is in such disrepair that up to 40 per cent of food produced in those areas is lost.

“We see poor infrastructure in the developing world … that means poor rural roads, inadequate storage facilities … means that so much food is lost during transportation,” Morley said. “Here in Canada, we don’t know how much food we lose, but our loss is at the other end—it’s the food that we throw out, and what we consign to the compost heap.”

The solutions to these problems are not immediately obvious.

Morley’s talk emphasized the realities of famine and food shortages which are often blunted in media reports by “antiseptic” words and statistics. To cope with food shortages or high food prices, people often eat less, sell as many belongings as they can spare, and go into debt.

“If you’re only eating two meals a day, now you’re eating one,” Morley said.

Somalia suffered low rainfall this year and its worst crop production in 17 years. Over the summer, it experienced a food shortage which grew to famine levels, a grisly term based on the price of food and how many adults and children die of malnutrition per day. Morley responded to criticisms that the UN should have declared a famine state earlier than it did with a precise definition.

“There’s a technical definition and there’s a reason that we wait until certain thresholds are met. The definition is this: it’s when more than 30  per cent of the children under five are acutely malnourished, and when people are receiving less than the 2,100 kilo-calories per day needed to survive, and when the death rate is higher than two adults or four children per 10,000 people.”

Nonetheless, UNICEF responded with a massive aid effort over the summer, despite the difficulties of delivering aid to a politically unstable region. They succeeded in importing 31,000 metric tonnes of supplies, including basic health kits for 600,000 people and emergency food supplies for almost 300,000 people for two weeks.

“We want to double our capacity … over the next year,” Morley said. “It takes an incredible amount of diplomatic skill because there are constant negotiations. We won’t pay bribes to get through, but we will talk about negotiations. We’ll say, this is what it’s going for, this is why it has to go, and you have to negotiate clan to clan in making sure that your food [and supplies go] as far as [they] can.”