U.S. Aid Cuts Leave $100 Million in Food Rotting as Hunger Surges

More than 70 million ready-to-eat meal packets for severely malnourished children have stacked up in warehouses in Georgia and Rhode Island since March, joining tens of thousands of tons of U.S.-funded food stranded globally after the Trump administration’s sweeping foreign aid cuts.

In total, nearly $100 million worth of emergency food—enough to feed 3.5 million people for a month—remains locked in storage from Houston to Djibouti. The stockpiles include fortified cereals, high-energy biscuits, and therapeutic peanut pastes such as Plumpy’Nut, originally bound for Gaza, Sudan, and other famine-hit regions.

The freeze, enacted in January, halted USAID deliveries and suspended contracts—even as the World Food Programme warns 343 million people face acute hunger, with nearly 2 million on the brink of famine. In Sudan alone, 25 million people—half the population—are in crisis.

Expiration dates are approaching fast. Nearly 500 tons of biscuits in Dubai, enough to treat 27,000 malnourished children, will spoil within weeks. Edesia, a Rhode Island producer, is holding $13 million in unused therapeutic foods that could save nearly half a million children.

“These products don’t belong in a warehouse. They belong in the hands of starving children,” said Navyn Salem, Edesia’s founder.

With USAID slated for closure by September 2025, the U.S.—long the backbone of international humanitarian relief—faces a collapse in leadership at the very moment global hunger is surging. Unless food is released immediately, the cost won’t just be wasted dollars, but lives lost on a devastating scale.