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The U.S. government will resume purchasing food designed for malnourished children around the world. This comes after months of uncertainty for the U.S. factories that make the product. The Trump administration's foreign aid shake-up has left them scrambling to survive. NPR's Gabrielle Emanuel takes us inside one of those factories.
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NAVYN SALEM: Those tanks that you see that are going all the way to the ceiling are vegetable oil.
GABRIELLE EMANUEL, BYLINE: For the past seven months, Navyn Salem has regularly donned her yellow safety vest and taken reporters to her factory warehouse in Rhode Island. She's the founder of Edesia Nutrition, which buys raw materials - like soy, powdered milk, peanuts - from U.S. farmers and makes it into Plumpy'Nut. That's a peanut buttery paste that can bring malnourished children back from the brink of starvation.
She's been showing the news outlets around to raise awareness about the fact that she's had to drastically cut back on making and shipping Plumpy'Nut. Around her are pallets stacked high with boxes meant for children in places like Nigeria. They're grounded as a result of stop-work orders and contract terminations from the U.S. government. This week, Salem says, she was in the warehouse with a TV crew when she got interrupted.
SALEM: Someone brought me my phone and said, look at what message just came in. So it was our first order for 2025.
EMANUEL: The State Department confirmed in a statement to NPR that it will be spending $93 million to buy products like Plumpy'Nut to send to a dozen African countries in Haiti. That's enough to help nearly a million kids. When Salem read the message, she cried happy tears.
SALEM: We were just over the moon trying to process all of this good news after lots and lots and lots of bad news.
EMANUEL: She's rehiring six of the 16 staff members she had to lay off in the spring and adding a Saturday shift. Caitlin Welsh at the Center for Strategic and International Studies says this isn't necessarily a game changer, but it is good news about the State Department's commitment to foreign aid.
CAITLIN WELSH: And it tells me, like, there's a pulse there. Like, it's not totally dead. But no one should be confused into thinking that this is a long-term solution.
EMANUEL: In Welsh's estimation, this new U.S. commitment is less than the country spent last year on therapeutic food. The State Department's statement said they are finalizing additional funding for nutrition programs. Alex de Waal studies famine at Tufts University. He says, since Trump's inauguration day, the gap between what food aid is needed and what's provided has been growing.
ALEX DE WAAL: We've had just a catastrophic gap, and this is just the first step towards filling that gap.
EMANUEL: But for Edesia Nutrition, this news is a big step. Those boxes full of Plumpy'Nut in the warehouse will soon be on their way to the malnourished children who need them, Gabrielle Emanuel, NPR News.
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