President Donald Trump’s cancellation of a government food security survey could make it difficult to assess whether his cuts to the food stamp program lead to a rise in US hunger, especially among children. The survey, which was canceled last September, had served as a measure of a household’s access to enough food for a healthy lifestyle for 30 years.

Impact on Hunger Data

The cancellation of the survey could make it harder to understand the impact of Trump’s cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which have already led to 4.7 million people losing their benefits. Experts say that without the data from the survey, it will be harder to make informed policy decisions about hunger and food insecurity.

The USDA had called the survey ‘redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous,’ but experts disagree. ‘It’s definitely going to be a void in information on prevalence of food insecurity,’ said Michele Ver Ploeg, a senior fellow at the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy.

Alternative Data Sources

While the federal government and some states continue to collect hunger data through other surveys, experts say that these surveys are not as comprehensive or representative as the canceled USDA survey. Food banks and other nonprofits may also release their own survey data, but it won’t be as comprehensive or representative.

The final USDA survey, released last December, showed that 13.7% of households were food insecure at some point during the year, the highest figure in a decade. Other research has pointed to the end of pandemic-era food aid and inflation as major drivers of the increase in food insecurity.

Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.