The Trump administration's Department of Agriculture is ending the Household Food Security Report, a decades-long effort to track food insecurity across the country. Craig Gundersen, professor of economics at Baylor University and a former USDA economist, joined CBS News to discuss the decision to end the report.

Washington

The Trump administration has announced it will end the Department of Agriculture's long-running Household Food Security Report, which has provided annual data on food insecurity among low-income Americans. The report has been used by federal, state, and local officials to inform policy decisions on food assistance programs.

The USDA stated the reports were redundant and politicized, but experts, including former USDA economist Craig Gunderson, argue the data is nonpartisan and essential for evaluating the effectiveness of programs like SNAP. Concerns have been raised that without this data, it will be more difficult to assess the impact of changes to food assistance programs and cuts to food support for schools and food banks.

Trump admin ending food insecurity report

An important change is coming from the Trump administration. The Department of Agriculture is ending a decades-long effort to track food insecurity across the country. The Household Food Security Report is what it's called, and it provides yearly data on the lack of access to adequate nutrition for low-income Americans. It's been used by federal, state, and local officials to help set policy on food assistance programs. The latest report found 18 million households were food insecure back in 2023, and that is up from 17 million back in 2022. A final report for 2024 will be released next month. And as for why these household food security reports are ending, the USDA released a statement saying, in part, these redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fearmonger. Joining us now to talk about this is Craig Gunderson. He's a professor of economics at Baylor University, also a former USDA economist. Thank you very much, Craig, for joining us to talk about all this and break this down. So, this announcement comes at a time when the Trump administration is cracking down on other government departments over data it considers to be politically motivated. In your opinion, were these reports considered to be partisan in any way? Absolutely not. Thank you so much for having me on here and asking me this question. No, these were nonpartisan. They've been widely used to examine questions that have been posed regarding the efficacy of right-leaning policies and left-leaning policies, and by no means was it ever a partisan tool. In fact, it's become the leading indicator of well-being for vulnerable Americans and incredibly important to our bipartisan efforts to alleviate food insecurity in the United States. So, Craig, as we mentioned, these reports help state and federal officials decide on policy to fight food insecurity, and they also measure, of course, how these food assistance programs are working. What will be the guidance on that and those decisions going forward? So, as I mentioned, because of this study and other uses of these food insecurity questions, as we've been able to demonstrate that SNAP is arguably the most effective government program we have, sets out to alleviate food insecurity, and study after study after study has shown that it does, including the data that's collected by USDA through this survey. My concern is that, as we make future changes to SNAP in various directions, is without this data, we're not gonna be able to say, is this working? Is this not working? We really, really need this data to be effective stewards of taxpayers' money. And it's not just nixing a report here. It also comes as Steve cuts to USDA programs that provide food to schools and food banks go into effect. What is your sense of the impact on Americans who are already struggling to access adequate nutrition? So, I think we do absolutely need to have a strong social safety net against hungry United States, and SNAP and our network of food banks is just incredibly important to those efforts. So, my concern that we're not gonna have this measure is that we're not gonna be able to see exactly what the implications of these cuts and other possible changes to SNAP and to provisions to food banks. All right, Craig Gunderson, thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

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