USDA ends annual food insecurity report

Two months after signing into law the largest food stamp cuts in the program’s history, the Trump administration has canceled the government’s annual report measuring household food insecurity (Source: “Trump Administration to Stop Measuring Food Insecurity,” New York Times, Sept. 20).
 
The move by the Agriculture Department removes the government’s main gauge of Americans’ ability to access adequate meals, and likely will impede researchers’ efforts to track the coming cuts in nutritional aid.
 
The department’s report has been published every year for three decades. The most recent report found that in 2023, 13.5% of households, with 47 million people, were food insecure, meaning that during some portion of the year, not every member of the household had access to enough food for a healthy lifestyle.
 
The Agriculture Department said in a statement on Saturday that the report had become “overly politicized, and upon subsequent review, is unnecessary to carry out the work of the department.”
 
The department will issue a final report next month covering 2024, based on a survey from last year, but will cease fielding future surveys, according to the statement.