Senator Yuri Latortue, who represents the city, said about 200,000 people there had not eaten for three days.
The UN aid shipment included bottled water, water-purification tablets, high-energy biscuits, cooking oil and rice.
UN peacekeeping soldiers aimed to distribute the biscuits and water within hours to emergency shelters where 40,000 people are marooned.
Prospery Raymond, from Christian Aid, said farmland had been flooded and the loss of crops was set to push food costs higher.
"The whole of the Artibonite valley has been submerged, which is where 80% of Haitian rice is grown. Rice crops were destroyed near the point of harvesting, which can only put the price of this staple food even further out of the reach of many families."
"There is no food, no water, no clothes," Arnaud Dumas, a pastor at a Gonaives church, told the Associated Press news agency. "We haven't found anything to eat in two, three days. Nothing at all."
An AP reporter in the city said safe drinking water was in very short supply, and fetid carcasses of drowned farm animals were strewn in soupy floodwaters.
Johnny Auguste, a shepherd from the south-western city of Miragoane, told the BBC that things were "very bad".
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