(TNND) — Food for starving children is piling up in a nonprofit's Rhode Island warehouse, and the leader of that organization doesn't know if she'll be able to get it shipped before it expires.

Navyn Salem, the CEO and founder of Edesia, wants her packets of Plumpy’Nut fortified peanut butter to end up with malnourished children in 65 countries across Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, not in an American landfill.

But much of her funding comes from U.S. government contracts.

And 20 days ago, she was told by a U.S. Agency for International Development official that the government does “not have any upcoming demand” for her emergency food aid.

Salem hasn’t heard an update from USAID or the State Department since then. And she doesn’t know when she will hear an update.

Salem and her nonprofit have been on a rough roller-coaster ride since President Donald Trump took office and issued an executive order to pause foreign assistance.

Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting task force have been on a crusade to shrink the federal bureaucracy and root out fraud, waste and abuse.

DOGE says it has saved taxpayers $160 billion so far by canceling costly government contracts, selling assets, fighting fraud, stopping grants, making changes to programs, layoffs and more.

Some experts, however, expressed doubt to The National News Desk that DOGE has actually achieved that level of savings.

USAID was targeted for cuts by the administration, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio announcing last month they were cancelling over 80% of the programs at USAID.

The surviving USAID programs are being absorbed by the State Department.

“We're in this very difficult in-between phase where ... USAID hasn't been absorbed by the State Department yet. So, we're still working with this very small skeleton crew at USAID to try to get any information we can,” Salem said.

Salem started Edesia about 15 years ago.

Edesia and another American operation, Mana, produce lifesaving food for starving children.

Salem built Edesia into the largest nonprofit in Rhode Island.

There, she sources ingredients from American farmers to make fortified peanut butter that can save a child from malnutrition with regular servings over eight weeks.

Salem said she can make 88 million pounds of Plumpy’Nut each year – enough to save 5 million starving children.

Last year, 85% of Edesia’s business came from USAID.

Salem said that was unusually high, but USAID is one of her nonprofit’s main buyers.

United Nations agencies, such as UNICEF and the World Food Programme, eventually get hold of Plumpy’Nut packets and coordinate with folks on the ground who get the food to the children.

Edesia was issued two stop-work orders from the U.S. government in late January in compliance with Trump’s pause on foreign assistance.

A week later, the stop-work orders were rescinded.

In late February, Edesia was notified of terminations to its government contracts.

Those were reversed a day later.

Then, Salem said the payment system was broken.

Edesia found itself $20 million in the hole, but she had good news to report on that front.

“A payment of $3.3 million came in this morning, and that's on top of $17 million that came in in two other intervals prior to that,” Salem said. “So, we're not quite whole, but this is a huge accomplishment.”

That money from the government paid for orders Edesia produced and shipped last fall.

But without new government orders coming in, and the supply of Plumpy’Nut piling up in Edesia’s warehouse, Salem said they were forced to lay off 10% of their staff and shut down their production lines.

“We've never shut down our lines in 15 years,” she said. “We run 24 hours a day, five days a week, typically in order to keep up with the requests. And so, we had shut the lines down for many weeks.”

Salem said she can appreciate Trump’s goal of making government more efficient.

“No one loves efficiency more than me. I run a manufacturing company,” she said. “Everything that we do is laser-focused on efficiencies. I have three pages of memos of ideas that I have been sending to USAID forever. They haven't listened. My hope is that this administration, that is focused on efficiency, will be like, ‘Those are really great ideas. Let's implement them.’ Because we can take our taxpayer dollars, and we can make them go farther. Because there are inefficiencies in the system.”

Salem also said she thinks Edesia’s mission aligns with those of Trump’s State Department.

Emergency food assistance is good for America’s soft power, national security, and for the various regions, where it can help bring stability to countries and reduce the likelihood that desperate populations will migrate, she said.

“All of our packets say, ‘From the American people.’ This makes me proud when I'm in clinics in Mali and Chad and Sierra Leone and Guatemala that I can see this came from Rhode Island with a little American flag on it, that this came from us to go and help the world,” Salem said. “Those families remember who it was that stepped up for them.”

Salem said she’s encouraged Edesia finally got paid for completed work.

She also said she’s hopeful, despite an uncertain timeline, that the U.S. government will once again call for her lifesaving food.

That hope stems from her belief that it’s in everyone’s best interest.

But she has no way of knowing how long the USAID transition will take, and what lasting damage might take place in the meantime for her nonprofit and for the starving children around the world.

“No one should walk by a hungry child and say this is OK,” Salem said.