US aid cuts leave food for millions mouldering in storage

TimesLIVE

16-05-2025

Food rations that could supply 3.5-million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of US aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation.
The food stocks have been stuck inside four US government warehouses since the decision by President Donald Trump's administration in January to cut global aid programmes, according to three people who previously worked at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and two sources from other aid organisations.
Some stocks due to expire as early as July are likely to be destroyed, either by incineration, using them as animal feed or disposing of them in other ways, two sources said.
The warehouses, run by USAID's bureau for humanitarian assistance (BHA), contain between 60,000 to 66,000 metric tonnes of food, sourced from American farmers and manufacturers, the five people said.
An undated inventory list for the warehouses, which are located in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai and Houston, stated they contained more than 66,000 tonnes of commodities, including high-energy biscuits, vegetable oil and fortified grains.
The supplies are valued at more than $98m (R1.7bn), according to the document reviewed by Reuters, which was shared by an aid official and verified by a US government source as up to date.
That food could feed more than a million people for three months, or the entire population of Gaza for a month-and-a-half, according to a Reuters analysis using figures from the World Food Programme.
The UN body said one tonne of food — typically including cereals, pulses and oil — can meet the daily need of about 1,660 people.
The dismantling of USAID and cuts to humanitarian aid spending by Trump come as global hunger levels are rising due to conflict and climate change, which are driving more people towards famine, undoing decades of progress.
According to the World Food Programme, 343-million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity worldwide. Of those, 1.9-million people are gripped by catastrophic hunger and on the brink of famine. Most are in Gaza and Sudan, but also in pockets of South Sudan, Haiti and Mali.
A spokesperson for the US state department, which oversees USAID, said in response to detailed questions about the food stocks that it was working to ensure the uninterrupted continuation of aid programmes and their transfer by July as part of the USAID decommissioning process.
'USAID is continuously consulting with partners on where to best distribute commodities at USAID pre-positioning warehouses for use in emergency programmes ahead of their expiration dates,' the spokesperson said.
SOME FOOD LIKELY TO BE DESTROYED
Though the Trump administration has issued waivers for some humanitarian programmes, including in Gaza and Sudan, the cancellation of contracts and freezing of funds needed to pay suppliers, shippers and contractors has left food stocks stuck in the four warehouses, the sources said.
A proposal to hand the stocks to aid organisations that can distribute them is on hold, according to the US source and two former USAID sources briefed on the proposal. The plan is awaiting approval from the US state department's office of foreign assistance, the two former USAID sources said.
The office is headed by Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old former operative of Elon Musk's department of government efficiency (DOGE), who is overseeing the decommissioning of USAID.
The office of foreign assistance, DOGE and Lewin did not respond to requests for comment.
Nearly 500 tonnes of high-energy biscuits stored at a USAID warehouse in Dubai are due to expire in July, according to a former USAID official and an aid official familiar with the inventories. The biscuits could feed at least 27,000 acutely malnourished children for a month, according to Reuters calculations.
The biscuits are likely to be destroyed or turned into animal feed, the former USAID official said, adding that in a typical year only about 20 tonnes of food might be disposed of in this way because of damage in transit or storage.
Some of the stocks were previously intended for Gaza and famine-stricken Sudan, the former official said.
The state department spokesperson did not directly respond to questions on how much of the food aid in storage was close to expiry and whether this would be destroyed.
USAID plans to fire almost all its staff in two rounds on July 1 and September 2 as it prepares to shut down, according to a notification submitted to Congress in March. The two former USAID sources said many critical staff needed to manage the warehouses or move the supplies will depart in July.
The US is the world's largest humanitarian aid donor, amounting to at least 38% of all contributions recorded by the UN. It disbursed $61bn (R1.1-trillion) in foreign assistance last year, just over half of it via USAID, according to government data.
US food aid includes ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) such as high-energy biscuits and Plumpy'Nut, a peanut-based paste.
Navyn Salem, the founder of Edesia, a US-based manufacturer of Plumpy'Nut, said termination of transportation contracts by USAID had created a massive backlog that had forced the firm to hire an additional warehouse to store its own production.
The resulting stockpile of 5,000 tonnes, worth $13m (R234.5m), could feed more than 484,000 children, she said.
Salem said email exchanges with Lewin have left her 'hopeful' that a way will be found soon to get her product to desperate children who need it.
The UN children's agency Unicef warned in late March that RUTF stocks were running short in 17 countries due to funding cuts, potentially forcing 2.4-million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition to go without the crucial supplies for the rest of the year.
The four USAID warehouses contain most of the agency's pre-positioned food stockpiles. In normal times, these could be rapidly deployed to places such as Sudan, where 25- million people, half the country's population, face acute hunger.
Jeanette Bailey, director of nutrition at the International Rescue Committee, which receives much of its funding from the US, said it was scaling back its programmes after the cuts.
She said the impact of global shortages of therapeutic foods due to the disruption to US aid flows is difficult to measure, particularly in places where aid programmes no longer operate.
'What we do know, though, is that if a child is in an inpatient stabilisation centre and no longer able to access treatment, more than 60% of those children are at risk of dying very quickly,' she said.
Action Against Hunger, a nonprofit that relied on the US for more than 30% of its global budget, said last month the US cuts had led to the deaths of at least six children at its programmes in the Democratic Republic of Congo after it was forced to suspend admissions.
The bureau for humanitarian affairs, which co-ordinates the US government's aid efforts overseas, was plunged into chaos by the Trump administration's cutbacks, the five sources said.
The bureau's staff were among thousands of USAID employees put on administrative leave pending their terminations. While some staff were brought back to work until their severance dates, aid administration has not recovered.
Three sources said the contract to maintain USAID warehouses in Durban, South Africa, had been cancelled, raising questions about future aid distribution. Reuters was unable to confirm that independently.
Two former USAID officials said the Djibouti and Dubai facilities would be handed over to a team at the state department which has not yet been formed. The state department did not comment.
A spokesperson for the World Food Programme, which relies heavily on US funding, declined to comment on the stranded food stocks.
Asked if it was engaged in discussions to release them, the spokesperson said: 'We greatly appreciate the support from all our donors, including the US, and we will continue to work with partners to advocate for the needs of the most vulnerable in urgent need of life-saving assistance'.