Last month, Edesia Nutrition — a nonprofit that aims to combat child malnutrition — expanded its North Kingstown factory capacity to enable programming to reach up to 10 million children annually.
The nonprofit manufactures a peanut paste called Plumpy’Nut, a ready-to-use therapeutic food used to treat malnourished children. The company plans to spend $15 million to increase production of a similar peanut-based product called Nutributter, a small quantity lipid-based nutrient supplement.
With the expansion, the organization aims to prevent child malnutrition, not just treat it.
“Edesia is really shifting its focus from reactive, life-saving treatment to proactive, life-building prevention for young children,” said Ron Dalgliesh ’91, chief development and global partnerships sales at Edesia. He explained that because prevention efforts are more affordable than treatment, this switch is the “most cost-effective thing that (Edesia) can do.”
The factory expansion has been in the works over the past three years. It was funded by a $137 million donation made in 2023 by the Bezos family.
The expansion, which increased the factory space by 215,000 square feet, will add 50 jobs to the organization.
Edesia previously manufactured a majority of its product for the United States Agency for International Development. In 2024, USAID purchased 75% of Edesia’s product. But in 2025, the Trump administration cut foreign assistance and dismantled USAID, leaving Edesia without its lead buyer.
“The dismantling of USAID was a devastating event for Edesia but also, most importantly, for impoverished people around the world,” Dalgliesh said. “No matter what anyone says, this constant dismantling of U.S. aid directly costs tens of thousands of lives.”
“The Trump administration and Elon Musk’s cruel decision to cut off lifesaving food aid to malnourished children to find more money for tax breaks for the rich is a moral failure,” U.S. Representative Seth Magaziner ’06 (D-R.I. 2) wrote in a statement to The Herald. “We must fight back forcefully against these disastrous decisions to prevent more unnecessary loss of life around the world.”
The White House and Elon Musk’s companies did not immediately respond to The Herald’s request for comment.
To restart production, Edesia increased private fundraising as well as partnerships with humanitarian organizations and governments, according to Dalgliesh.
In March 2025, Edesia launched a funding campaign called “Children Can’t Wait.” The program engaged donors who helped to fund the distribution of Plumpy’Nut to children in need. Children “can’t wait for the U.S. government or other agencies to figure this out,” Dalgliesh said. “We needed to act.”
Dalgliesh said that the government has renewed a large share of its emergency-food-aid funding. But while the government has brought back some spending for food aid, it is happening at a reduced rate. Many of the experts who previously worked at USAID are no longer there to handle the mechanics of food distribution.
“The rate of the spending of that money that Congress and the government has appropriated has been pretty slow,” he said. “And largely, that's because many of the experts who had worked in USAID.”
Allison Lombardo — a former senior advisor to the USAID Administrator and a former senior fellow at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs — believes that private philanthropy like the Bezos Family Foundation has “an important role to play” but cannot fully make up for government cuts. “The gap is too big,” she said.
“Humanitarian aid is, simply put, part of our collective humanity,” Lombardo said.
“Malnutrition is a leading cause of death among children under five worldwide, yet we have the cure, and it is manufactured by workers right here in North Kingstown,” Magaziner added in his statement. “In addition to saving innocent lives, providing food aid to regions facing famine and war also promotes stability in those places and strengthens our diplomatic relationships with other countries.”
