The U.S. Department of Agriculture will no longer release its annual Household Food Security in the United States report, a key federal measure used for over three decades to track how many Americans have reliable access to food.

In a release sent to on Saturday, the USDA confirmed that the 2024 edition of the report, scheduled for October 22, will be the last. The department stated that the report had become "overly politicized" and was "unnecessary to carry out the work of the Department."

Originally created to support the development of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the survey has long been a cornerstone for researchers, policymakers, and advocacy organizations. But the USDA now argues that the methodology is flawed and the results "rife with inaccuracies."

According to the agency, the report's subjective survey questions "do not present an accurate picture of actual food security," and were said to be "slanted to create a narrative that is not representative of what is actually happening in the countryside." The USDA asserts that the U.S. is currently experiencing "lower poverty rates, increasing wages, and job growth" under the Trump administration.

The move comes on the heels of the One Big Beautiful Act, recently passed legislation that significantly cuts SNAP spending by $186 billion over 10 years. Key provisions include expanded work requirements-now affecting adults up to age 64 and parents of school-aged children-and a first-time mandate for states to share SNAP benefit costs. Some of the projected SNAP savings are being redirected to commodity programs, crop insurance, and other farm bill priorities.

Despite USDA's dismissal of the survey's accuracy, its 2023 edition showed that 13.5% of U.S. households were food insecure, up from 12.8% in 2022. That's a notable jump from 10.5% in 2020, the final year of the first Trump administration.

Under the loused USDA definition, a household is considered food insecure if it had "difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members because of a lack of resources."

The Wall Street Journal first reported the survey's termination. The decision has drawn strong reactions from nutrition advocates and economists who have relied on the report to track hunger trends, allocate resources, and measure the effects of federal nutrition policies.

Without the report, observers worry that U.S. food security data will become less transparent, especially as the political climate around poverty and nutrition becomes increasingly polarized.