NEW YORK >> This “yo-yo” of a year continues for America’s nutritional peanut paste manufacturers, nonprofits that have found their lifesaving food packets disrupted by the U.S. State Department’s sudden pause in foreign assistance.

Georgia-based MANA Nutrition and Rhode Island-based Edesia Nutrition are two key links in the global supply chain sending nutritional mixtures of ground peanuts, powdered milk, sugar and oil to malnourished children worldwide. American farmers supply ingredients, shipping companies carry paste overseas and NGOs distribute the food throughout countries in need. Any delays complicate the network’s delicate logistics, relied upon by millions of children.

Yet the U.S. scrapped all of their upcoming contracts to make peanut butter paste, according to an April 4 email shared with The Associated Press detailing the U.S. Agency for International Development‘s anticipated summer demand. Enough boxes to treat more than 450,000 children in Yemen were cancelled and more than 800,000 others “will not move forward at this time.”

Complicating matters further, MANA Nutrition CEO Mark Moore said USAID didn’t pay $20 million in debts accumulated since December until last week. Neither maker was reimbursed by previous deadlines to expedite debt payments.

Keeping MANA afloat amid the U.S. funding chaos is a longtime partner from across the pond: British billionaire hedge fund manager Chris Hohn.

“The reason I can not be in just complete panic right now,” Moore said last month, “is Chris.”

But the private support and reopened funding spigot are hardly enough to assure producers they will keep reaching youth in impoverished countries. And they don’t expect philanthropy to replace government funding forever.

The ups and downs underscore the pain felt even by the few surviving programs of the Trump administration’s USAID purge that recently targeted initiatives keeping millions alive.