Amid hunger increases in Kentucky and beyond, USDA cancels annual survey
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- Policy experts warn cancellation hinders hunger insight and informed state action.
In spite of finding an increase in hunger in Kentucky and beyond, the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the administration of President Donald Trump announced it will end its annual Household Food Security Report.
For three decades, the federal government has published an annual breakdown of household hunger to understand who is experiencing it. The findings have helped policy advocates develop programs to combat the problem, such as SNAP.
The latest survey showed that Kentucky was among seven states with a food insecurity rate higher than that of the national average. It found that out of nearly 1,800,000 Kentucky households, 375,270 struggled to access a healthy diet or food at all.
The office said the 2024 report, to be released Oct. 22, would be its last.
“These redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger,” USDA wrote in a press release.
The annual survey was created during Bill Clinton’s presidency 30 years ago to identify the scope of hunger throughout the country, pinpointing key demographics such as age and ethnic groups.
Now, under Trump, the USDA calls the survey’s findings “subjective, liberal fodder.”
“Trends in the prevalence of food insecurity have remained virtually unchanged, regardless of an over 87% increase in SNAP spending between 2019–2023,” USDA wrote.
Last year’s Household Food Security Report, however, revealed that between 2021 and 2023, hunger has grown.
Jessica Klein, a policy associate at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, is concerned about Kentucky’s ability to measure hunger without the study going forward.
“It is unfortunate that the survey will no longer be put out,” Klein said. “It is really one of the core national resources for measuring the prevalence of hunger in states, and it really gets to household demographics, which a lot of other surveys don’t get to.”
The study has been able to isolate key patterns around those experiencing hunger, like family size. Knowing those, Klein said, helps measure the commonwealth’s hunger against national statistics.
“Hunger is getting worse in Kentucky, especially since COVID-19, when we had a lot of flexibility in additional support for people through public assistance programs,” Klein said. “And what those were proven to do is to reduce food insecurity, meaning people had more consistent access to be able to pay for their groceries.”
In addition to COVID-19 assistance programs, inflation has contributed to the hunger increases in Kentucky and the country at large.
Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill has been estimated to cut SNAP funding by almost $186 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The decision to eliminate the study came two days after a judge blocked the USDA from requesting SNAP beneficiaries’ personal data. That request was made in light of the Big, Beautiful Bill’s changes to SNAP eligibility and the president’s stated crackdown on “waste, fraud and abuse” within public programs.
