Did Trump End National Hunger Survey to Hide Growing Hunger Under His Policies?

"Workers pack boxes for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program at the Orange County Food Bank in Garden Grove, California, on May 9, 2025. Paul Bersebach / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register via Getty Images During the first term of Ronald Reagan's presidency, the Reagan administration denied that hunger and malnutrition were significant issues in the U.S. In response, the Food Research & Action Center and other anti-hunger advocacy groups began developing large-scale hunger surveys to chart the problem."

"The advocacy groups started collecting large-scale hunger data first in Connecticut and Washington during the middle years of the Reagan presidency, added seven more states at decade's end, and in the early 1990s began surveying several more. In 1995, they convinced the Census Bureau to add food insecurity questions into the population survey, and in 1997, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Census Bureau began conducting national surveys aimed at understanding food insecurity in the United States."

"Those massive surveys, carried out by the USDA's Economic Research Service, have been the gold bar for understanding hunger in the country for nearly 30 years. The most recent survey revealed that one in seven Americans, or more than 47 million people, were food insecure, meaning they were reliant on federal assistance, were using food banks and pantries, were skipping meals, or were worried about where they would find the money to put food on the table."

Anti-hunger advocacy groups developed large-scale hunger surveys after the Reagan administration denied that hunger and malnutrition were significant U.S. problems. Those groups began state-level data collection in Connecticut and Washington, expanded to additional states by the end of the 1980s, and encouraged the Census Bureau to add food insecurity questions in 1995. In 1997 the USDA and Census Bureau initiated national surveys. The USDA Economic Research Service surveys became the standard source for measuring hunger, showing roughly one in seven Americans—over 47 million people—experienced food insecurity. Those surveys identified affected populations, geographic patterns, and effective mitigation strategies. The surveys were abruptly ended in late September.

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