Hunger Gets Memory Holed

In response to reports of increased hunger in the United States, the the Trump Administration is terminating the decades-old annual hunger survey.

I guess that's one way of dealing with societal problems, suppress any information about the problem:

The Trump administration is canceling an annual government effort to gather data on how many Americans struggle to get enough food.

The data, which is collected each December and analyzed by the U.S. Agriculture Department, measures food insecurity across states and demographic groups. 

The data has been collected every year since the mid-1990s and is widely used by federal, state and local policymakers to make funding decisions for food-assistance programs and to evaluate how well those programs work.

The decision to discontinue the survey for 2025 was announced in meetings with USDA employees this past week by an administrator for the Economic Research Service, an arm of the Agriculture Department, according to people present at the meetings. 

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Employees inside the USDA as well as economists outside the agency who work closely with the data reacted with shock and anger as word spread about the cancellation. 

“For the past 30 years, the USDA food insecurity measure has provided insight into the extent that American families have been able to cover their food needs,” said Colleen Heflin, a professor at Syracuse University, who has been studying the data since its inception and learned of its cancellation. “Not having this measure for 2025 is particularly troubling given the current rise in inflation and deterioration of labor market conditions, two conditions known to increase food insecurity.” 

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The decision to end the USDA data collection comes at a time when more Americans are struggling to get enough to eat. Food banks have seen requests for assistance from households rise over the past few years, driven by the end of pandemic aid programs and the impact of inflation on grocery prices. 

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The decision to end the USDA data collection comes at a time when more Americans are struggling to get enough to eat. Food banks have seen requests for assistance from households rise over the past few years, driven by the end of pandemic aid programs and the impact of inflation on grocery prices. 

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Lindsey Smith Taillie, professor in the nutrition department at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, said without the study, the nation would have no real compass on a key health indicator for Americans.

“Why would you not want to measure it?” she said. “I think the only reason why you wouldn’t measure it is if you were planning to cut food assistance, because it basically allows you to pretend like we don’t have this food insecurity problem.” 

 When there is a reckoning for these folks, there will not be a dungeon deep enough to throw them into.