“Hunger will not disappear simply because it is no longer tracked.” Eric Mitchell, president of the Alliance to End Hunger (Politico)
From NPR:
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the administration of President Trump announced on Saturday that it will end a longstanding annual food insecurity survey, calling it “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous.”
The Household Food Security Report provides yearly data on the lack of access to adequate nutrition for low-income Americans, and helps shape policy on how to combat food insecurity and hunger.
The USDA’s announcement comes after Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law this summer, which expands the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. This, in effect, will leave an estimated 2.4 million Americans without food aid.
The Huffington Post: “These redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a statement over the weekend. It’s President Donald Trump’s starkest attack on economic data since he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month over unfavorable jobs numbers. And it comes as the Trump administration prepares to enact food benefit cuts Republicans pushed through Congress to help pay for tax cuts.
“For 30 years, this study—initially created by the Clinton administration as a means to support the increase of SNAP eligibility and benefit allotments—failed to present anything more than subjective, liberal fodder,” the USDA said in its unsigned press release “Trends in the prevalence of food insecurity have remained virtually unchanged, regardless of an over 87% increase in SNAP spending between 2019 – 2023.”
More than 20 million households receive SNAP benefits. The average monthly benefit, disbursed on debit cards that can be used for food items at grocery stores, is $356.