When President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing foreign aid payments last month, Mark Moore, cofounder and CEO of Mana Nutrition, faced a dilemma. He could cease operations and furlough staff, knowing that the money would stop coming in, or keep going in the hope that payments would resume at some point.
“We've decided just to keep going,” Moore told Agri-Pulse. “We're not going to stop.”
Mana produces what is known as “ready-to-use therapeutic food,” called RUTF, at its 135,000-square-foot facility in Fitzgerald, Georgia. These nutrient-dense, peanut-based packets, about the size of an iPhone, are used to treat acute malnutrition in children.
Moore describes the products as “a middle ground between medicine and food,” what he sees as the “front line defense against severely malnourished children.”
The U.S. Agency for International Development, Moore said, accounts for more than 90% of Mana’s annual sales – which topped $50 million in 2023, according to the nonprofit’s annual report. But when Trump paused foreign aid, the payments dried up, Moore said. Although the company has continued to fill USAID orders out of its warehouse in Savannah, Georgia, the firm is not being compensated.
The nonprofit received an official stop work order on Jan. 29, Moore said, more than a week after Trump signed the order on his inauguration day. USAID typically has 30 days to pay, once it receives the products, Moore said. Mana has not been paid since mid-December.
USAID sends manufacturers like Mana quarterly forecasts so they can plan production. A forecast viewed by Agri-Pulse sent on Jan. 17 – three days before the foreign aid pause – calls for more than 20,000 nutrition packages, destined for countries like Chad, Nigeria, Somalia, Bangladesh and Yemen. Some delivery dates are for as far out as June and even September.
“We are now making them, but the question is whether the contracts are going to be upheld,” Moore said.
A federal judge directed the administration to pay all invoices outstanding before Feb. 13 by the end of Wednesday. But the same judge has ruled the administration failed to comply with an earlier order directing the unfreezing of foreign aid.
A major factor in Moore’s decision to press ahead with operations, he said, was the challenge associated with restarting operations after a closure or scaling back of operations, including rehiring staff who might have moved on to other jobs.
“It would be so hard to recover from,” Moore said.
The same issue, however, could hinder USAID’s revival should the administration resume foreign aid shipments, or should lawmakers decide to move food aid responsibility to USDA.
The Trump administration said Sunday that it is eliminating about 2,000 USAID positions in the U.S.; most of the agency’s foreign-based workforce will be placed on administrative leave, the Associated Press reported.
A USAID contractor who works on the Food for Peace program in the agency's Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance told Agri-Pulse Friday that they, and others, received termination letters last week.
Mana is one of only two U.S. entities that makes RUTF packs. The other, Edesia Nutrition, is based in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. Like Mana, Edesia founder and CEO Navyn Salem has opted to continue operations, despite outstanding payments. Salem said USAID had not picked up any shipments since the freeze. Like Moore, she estimated Edesia had not received any USAID payments since December.
An RUTF nutrition packet. (Mana photo)“We work with UNICEF as well,” Salem said. “So right now we're prioritizing UNICEF orders.”
Salem would not say how long the organization could continue without scaling back operations and reducing the 160-strong workforce. Moore estimated that he had a six-week window before Mana would be in “emergency mode.”
Moore was hopeful that even if USAID did not resume foreign aid operations, UNICEF would step in to plug the hole.
He acknowledged that the gap would be substantial, but said he is “relentlessly optimistic.”
After USAID receives the shipments, Moore said, it sends some food to UNICEF, the World Food Program and other nongovernmental organizations. UNICEF would have to find alternative funding sources if USAID stopped buying food but Moore said UNICEF could deal with Mana directly and up its purchases in the event of USAID’s collapse.
Salem seemed more doubtful, however.
“That would be a huge undertaking,” she said. But she is keeping an “open mind” and exploring “alternative ways to make sure that the work we do continues across the entire supply chain.”
The economic repercussions could be far-reaching
Both North Kingstown, Rhode Island, and Fitzgerald, Georgia, are small towns of around 28,000 and 9,000, respectively. Significant layoffs or closure would ripple through local economies, Moore and Salem said.
With 135 employees, Mana is one of the top five employers in Fitzgerald, Moore said. Similarly, Edesia is one of the largest exporters in Rhode Island, according to Salem, and both are significant contributors to the local economy.
Both also have input supply chains that spread out across the U.S. that would take a hit.
“We're buying commodities from 25 different states,” Salem said. “That can be over $100 million in milk powder, peanuts, sugar, vegetable oil, packaging, vitamins, etcetera. And so we're a large customer for many of these other companies… American farmers are going to be at risk because they're all part of this supply chain.”
USAID buys around $2 billion worth of food from U.S. farmers each year, according to a USAID webpage on the Food for Peace program that has been removed from the site but was live as recently as Jan. 31.
Bobby Hanks, CEO of Supreme Rice, a rice milling company, told Agri-Pulse that food aid made up around 5% of total rice exports last year. Similarly, Virginia Houston, director of government affairs at the American Soybean Association, estimated that Food for Peace bought around $110 million worth of soy products.
“It's not an insubstantial number,” Houston said. Providing humanitarian food aid has long-term economic benefits for agricultural exporters that could be lost if Food for Peace dies, she said.
Japan, once a recipient of U.S. food aid, has become a major importer of U.S. agricultural products. South Korea relied on U.S. food aid following the Korean War while it recovered but now imports more than $7 billion of U.S. food and agricultural products annually, according to Food Export USA.
“Food aid programs are the bedrock of trade,” Houston said.
Africa has received the bulk of the $110 million worth of U.S. soy distributed through Food for Peace, Houston said. The continent could double its $55 billion of annual agricultural imports by 2030, according to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Preserving food aid to Africa could give U.S. products a leg up in the growing market.
“If we can get a foothold with trade in Africa, I think that this has a lot of potential for not just U.S. soy, but U.S. agriculture at large,” Houston said.
A ‘knife fight’ of competition
If the Trump administration’s goal is to reduce spending, Salem and Moore said, creating uncertainty for the only RUTF providers could backfire. They described a highly competitive process in which both bid for USAID orders and the government selects the producer with the most competitive price and lead time.
“It is a knife fight every time there's a bid between us,” Moore said.
“Mark and I compete on every single contract, and we win and lose on a single penny,” Salem added.
If one of the two closed, Salem said, the other could easily hike its prices and the government would have little choice but to accept the higher rates.
“I could triple my prices, and they'd have to take it,” she said. “What we have is a very healthy ecosystem that is highly competitive. We are pushed…. I do not run like a nonprofit. We run like an everyday, competitive for-profit manufacturing company that just happens to make food that saves lives.”
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