Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by Bread for the World on September 28, 2026, and authored by Sakeenah Shabazz, Deputy Director of Bread for the World’s Policy and Research Institute (PRI). Bread for the World is a member of the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN). CHN and its partners rely on the USDA’s Household Food Security Report to understand and address hunger across the country. We are deeply concerned by the USDA’s decision to discontinue this critical data collection and publication, disregarding its importance and effectiveness in informing research, advocacy, and policy solutions to food insecurity.

Every September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its annual Household Food Security in the U.S. Report, generated by the Economic Research Service. Advocates, researchers, congressional staffers, and the media anticipated the release of this report, and then promptly shared findings with the public. Despite being dense and technical, it was always understood by these groups that the numbers reflected real people and the hardship many faced in putting food on the table.

In 2025, after 30 years of publishing the report, USDA terminated its data collection and publication, citing it as “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous.” The last report was quietly published in December 2025, four months late. Nine months later, the gap in the data is officially here, but it doesn’t have to be.

What is the Household Food Security Report?

The Household Food Security Report is an annual publication produced by USDA, featuring data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. The data that researchers use to generate the food insecurity rate for the U.S. is based on questions in the Current Population Survey – Food Security Supplement (CPS-FFS). Typically, this survey is administered every December when roughly 40,000 households across the U.S. report on their food intake, dietary quality, and more.

Participants respond to statements such as:

• “We worried whether our food would run out before we got money to buy more” and
• “We couldn’t afford to eat balanced meals”

Participants rated their responses as occurring often, sometimes, or never true over the past 12 months. They also answered “yes”/ “no” questions like whether they ate less, went hungry, lost weight, or skipped meals entirely due to lack of money for food. Additional questions may also be asked depending on whether children are present in the household.

What the 2024 Report Told Us about Hunger in America 

Any affirmative response to the statements above signaled some degree of food hardship in the household. But what does this actually mean? First, people should know that what we learn from the data is retrospective. The last report that came out in 2025 reflected experiences in 2024. This is important because this data does not tell us what is happening in real time. Media outlets reporting on increased demand at food banks and food pantries, difficulties accessing SNAP, and churches other places of worship serving  their community often give us that real time perspective of everyday challenges. Nonetheless, this retrospective data is informative.

In 2024, 18.3 million households (or 13.7% of the U.S. population) were food insecure. This means at some point in the year, these households had difficulty putting enough food on the table for everyone in their household to eat. Even more concerning, around 7.2 million households (or 5.4% of U.S. households) had very low food security. This means one or more people in the home – potentially a child – ate less food than normal or had disrupted eating patterns due to limited income.

The report also told readers that states like Arkansas (19.4%), Kentucky (18.8%), Texas (17.6%), Mississippi (17.3%), and Oklahoma (16.9%) had some of the highest rates of food insecurity in the nation. That rural, non-metropolitan geographies – like in Kansas – have food insecurity rates above the national average (15.9%). Households with children, on average, had higher rates of food insecurity than those without (18.4%).

While the 2024 report was not perfect, it offered critical insights that the American public – from the halls of Congress to church basements – could use to move the needle on ending hunger.

What Can Be Done to Bring Back the Household Food Security Report?

While data collection and publication has been terminated for now, Congress can play a role in helping to restore the report. The Food Assurance and Security Act (H.R. 6252) was introduced in January 2026 and would direct USDA to resume collection and reporting of food security data. The bill does not yet have a Republican co-sponsor, but with hunger present in every zip code, this is a bipartisan issue that all of Congress should consider.

The public can also play a role, too. You can talk to your members of Congress about hunger in your district and use Bread’s Offering of Letters Campaign as a useful tool. For those who want quick facts and figures on hunger in their state, you can use Bread’s U.S. Hunger Data Dashboard, which features household food security data from USDA.

USDA, with the Secretary’s authority, can also simply restore the report. The permission to collect the data, and report it out, is still there, until 2028. Regardless of the pathway, the public needs this data. Without it, we lose a critical tool for measuring and understanding hunger in our communities and finding solutions to end it.