NORTH KINGSTOWN – Edesia Inc. President and founder Navyn Salem said the humanitarian aid agency's warehouse is once again piling up with life-saving food products – which feeds malnourished children across the world – because the federal government hasn't placed any new orders yet for 2025.
Salem said Edesia did receive federal payments for the work it completed and the products it shipped out in 2024. However, she added that some orders placed last year still remain unshipped because the necessary transportation documentation from the federal government has not been provided, causing funding for new orders in 2025 to not be approved.
"At the moment, we have 123,188 boxes of Plumpy'Nut [Edesia's flagship product] that were supposed to be shipped to Sudan" where a civil war is ravaging the country, Salem said. "Instead, they are stuck inside our warehouse because we don't have a transportation contract."
Salem said those Sudanese children are currently subsisting on grass and leaves without U.S. humanitarian aid. Edesia says its peanut-based paste has saved more than 25 million lives in 65 countries.
This is not the first time Edesia has seen such inventory stockpiling due to inaction by the federal government. Salem said the nonprofit similarly had its warehouses filled with pallets of Plumpy'Nut earlier this year after the Trump administration froze USAID funding for foreign aid organizations in a Jan. 20 executive memo.
On Jan. 28, Edesia had to
stop production of Pumpy'Nut for several days after USAID issued a stop-work order for all of its contractors following President Donald Trump’s executive order.
Pallets of the product sat inside Edesia’s warehouses until the stop-work order was rescinded on Feb. 6. Deliveries resumed after a U.S. federal judge told the Trump administration to restore foreign aid funding that had been paused pending a 90-day review.
Last month, the North Kingstown-based humanitarian aid agency had to
lay off 16 workers, accounting for about 10% of its staff, due to a lack of U.S. Agency for International Development payments.
At the time, Edesia had not received any USAID payments since November, despite $200 million in federal funds being allocated for Edesia in May 2024. Last year alone, USAID accounted for 85% of Edesia’s funding.
Salem said there have been no new layoffs since last month, and there are no plans to do so at the moment.
Meanwhile on April 28, U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., announced that he would be speaking on the House floor every day until federal funding for emergency food aid is restored to provide Edesia with new work orders.
Magaziner called the Edesia situation a "moral failure" of the Trump administration, which came in spite of assurances from Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that funding for emergency food aid produced by Edesia would continue.
"I was incredibly moved by the speech Representative Magaziner made on the House floor yesterday, calling for the restarting of the production and shipping of Edesia's life-saving foods to malnourished children caught in emergency humanitarian crisis," Salem said.
Matthew McNulty is a PBN staff writer. He can be reached at McNulty@PBN.com or on X at @MattMcNultyNYC.
