US aid cuts leave food for millions mouldering in storage

CNA

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 Trump administration's decision in January to cut global aid programmes, according to three people who previously worked at the US Agency for International Development and two sources from other aid organisations.
Some stocks that are 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 of the sources said.
The warehouses, which are 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 that they contained more than 66,000 tonnes of commodities, including high-energy biscuits, vegetable oil and fortified grains.
Those supplies are valued at over US$98 million, 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 over 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 world's largest humanitarian agency.
The UN body says that one tonne of food - typically including cereals, pulses and oil - can meet the daily need of approximately 1,660 people.
The dismantling of USAID and cuts to humanitarian aid spending by President Donald Trump come as global hunger levels are rising due to conflict and climate change, which are driving more people toward 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 of them are in Gaza and Sudan, but also in pockets of South Sudan, Haiti and Mali.
A spokesperson for the 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 programs 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 prepositioning warehouses for use in emergency programs ahead of their expiration dates," the spokesperson said.
SOME FOOD LIKELY TO BE DESTROYED
Although 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 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, who is now overseeing the decommissioning of USAID.
The Office of Foreign Assistance, DOGE and Lewin himself 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 now likely to be destroyed or turned into animal feed, the former USAID official said, adding that in a typical year only around 20 tonnes of food might be disposed of in this way because of damage in transit or storage.
Some of those 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 of its staff in two rounds on Jul 1 and Sep 2, as it prepares to shut down, according to a notification submitted to Congress in March. The two former USAID sources said many of the critical staff needed to manage the warehouses or move the supplies will depart in July.
CHILDREN DYING
The United States is the world's largest humanitarian aid donor, amounting to at least 38 per cent of all contributions recorded by the United Nations. It disbursed US$61 billion 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 US$13 million, could feed more than 484,000 children, she said.
Salem said that email exchanges with Lewin have left her "hopeful" that a way will be found soon to get her product to the 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 these crucial supplies for the rest of the year.
The four USAID warehouses contain the majority of the agency's pre-positioned food stockpiles. In normal times, these could be rapidly deployed to places like 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 following 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's in an inpatient stabilisation centre and they're no longer able to access treatment, more than 60 per cent of those children are at risk of dying very quickly," she said.
Action Against Hunger, a non-profit that relied on the United States for over 30 per cent of its global budget, said last month the US cuts had already 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.
CUTS CAUSING CHAOS
The Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs, which coordinates 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 severence dates, aid administration has not recovered.
Three sources told Reuters that the contract to maintain USAID warehouses in the South African port city of Durban had been cancelled, raising questions about future aid distribution. Reuters was unable to confirm that independently.
Two former USAID officials said that the Djibouti and Dubai facilities would be handed over to a team at the State Department which has yet to be formed. The State Department did not comment.
A spokesperson for the WFP, which relies heavily on US funding, declined to comment on the stranded food stocks.