Leaders from one of the largest hunger relief organizations in the St. Louis region says the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent cancellation of its annual food insecurity report will do more harm than good.
The USDA on Sept. 20 announced it will no longer provide its Household Food Security Report in an effort to save money, stating that the “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger.”
The report has been published annually for 30 years and is the largest study of food insecurity in the U.S., providing data on race, ethnicity, age and geographical locations of food deserts across the country. Around 40,000 households and families are interviewed for the assessment as federal, state and local organizations utilize the information to assess needs.
In the last report, researchers found the food insecurity rate across the country was 13.5% in 2023 and 12.2% the year prior.
The USDA said in a statement that despite the report cancellation, it will “continue to prioritize statutory requirements and where necessary, use the bevy of more timely and accurate data sets available to it.”
The final report under the current presidential administration will be released next month.
But leaders at Operation Food Search in Overland say without this data, acquiring funding will be difficult, as well as uncovering new food-insecure areas. The group distributes $30 million worth of food and necessities each year to 330 community partners in 25 Missouri and Illinois counties — $32 million worth of resources were distributed last year.
The company’s president and CEO, Kristen Wild, said the USDA report highlights food deserts by county, which helps determine where to provide resources.
She stressed that the information is crucial to combating rising grocery prices and the potential loss of Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.
“Food prices over the past five years have increased 30%, so we won't know the impact of these cuts to safety net programs and continued inflation without having the report on food insecurity,” Wild said. “Cancelation of the report is not canceling hunger. Hunger is increasing, and we need the data to most effectively deploy the resources to those who don't have enough healthy food.”
According to OFS, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that 150,000 Missourians and 472,000 Illinoisans will lose SNAP assistance, numbers largely made up of disabled and elderly people, the working poor, veterans and children.
The group relies heavily on data when applying for grants, Wild said.
“They want to know, who are we serving? What are the food insecurity rates right now? About a third of kids in St. Louis City do not have the food they need to lead healthy lives. So numbers like that are really impactful and incentivize funders to allocate resources so that we can provide food to those areas.”
Eligibility for school nutrition programs is also being made more difficult, and local food purchase programs have been discontinued, Wild noted.
“It's not just SNAP, there are several safety net programs in addition to potential Medicaid cuts that obviously will impact people financially, leading to greater food insecurity, including continued inflation,” Wild added.
Loss of the USDA report will also impact Operation Food Search’s ability to manage and sustain operations, said Chief Operating Officer Carlton Adams.
“I mean, you need to be on the street talking to people and really understanding their day to day,” Adams said. “But in addition to that, you need data to back up what you're doing … how many trucks you need to send … how much we need to change and redouble our efforts around donated food [and] grant money for purchasing food — all of the things that we do to kind of keep the wheels running here.”
