Some 12.8% of U.S. households were food insecure in 2022, a jump from 10.2% the year before and the largest annual increase in USDA's hunger measure since 2008.
Last year's was the highest rate of food insecurity since 2014, when the rate was 14%, according to USDA's Household Food Security in the United States in 2022 report, released Wednesday.
About 13.4 million children, or 18.5% of U.S. kids, lived in food insecure households last year, the report said.
The increase in food insecurity coincided with soaring food inflation. Supermarket prices skyrocketed by 11.4% in 2022 after an increase of 3.5% in 2021. The cost of eating at home has risen by an average of 2.5% over the past 20 years.
Agriculture Security Tom Vilsack called the report a “sobering reminder” of the struggles many face to put food on the table. He said food insecurity started to increase as the pandemic began to wane in 2022.
“These numbers are more than statistics,” Vilsack said. “They paint a picture of just how many Americans faced the heartbreaking challenge last year of struggling to meet a basic need for themselves and their children, and the survey responses should be a wake-up call to those wanting to further roll back our anti-poverty and anti-hunger programs.”
Households or individuals are classified by USDA as food insecure, if they had trouble finding enough food at some point during the year. People are considered to have very low food security, if they had to eat less or their eating patterns were disrupted during the year because they couldn't afford enough food.
Some 5.1% of households had very low food security in 2022, up from 3.8% in 2021.
For those considered very low food security last year, 98% reported they were worried food would run out. Some 96% reported they could not afford to eat balanced meals and the same percentage reported that as an adult they had cut the size of a meal or skipped a meal.
Some 29% reported that an adult in the household did not eat for a whole day because there was not enough money for food.
“Most households with very low food security (65%) reported seven or more food-insecure conditions,” the report said.
Arkansas had the highest household food insecurity with an average of 16.6% from 2020 to 2022, followed by Texas at 15.5%, Mississippi at 15.3% and Louisiana at 15.2%. State hunger rates are calculated based on three-year averages. New Hampshire had the lowest food insecurity average at 6.2%. The U.S. average for the comparable period was 11.2%.
Lisa Davis, senior vice president of Share Our Strength and its No Kid Hungry campaign, said in a statement that one in five kids "facing hunger in our nation is a heartbreaking reality and an avoidable tragedy.”
Davis added, “Today, food insecurity remains substantially higher than the national average for Black households with children (27.9%) and Hispanic households with children (24.7%).”
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About 55% of food-insecure households in the survey reported that in the previous month, they participated in one or more of the three largest federal nutrition assistance programs: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program; and the National School Lunch Program.
Vilsack said all of these programs are “currently at risk of reduced funding or restricted access.”
“The uptick in food insecurity also occurred at a time when significant safety net enhancements that helped people through the worst of the pandemic began to end, including the expanded Child Tax Credit, universally free school meals, and, in a number of states, higher SNAP benefits,” Vilsack said.
Vilsack said the findings reinforce the need to pass a farm bill that protects the nutrition assistance needed. “We also need a farm bill that protects SNAP benefits—because they work to help lift people out of poverty.”
The secretary also called on all states to “embrace the Summer EBT program to help kids access healthy food during the summer months, when school is out, and child food insecurity is highest.”
Davis said, “Families in America are hurting. But we know what will help. We need to ensure Congress finds a bipartisan path forward to protect the remaining vestiges of the investments in programs proven to work and to further strengthen them.”
Nell Menefee-Libbey, public policy manager for the National WIC Association, said in a statement to Agri-Pulse, "Food insecurity is rising sharply in the United States, among both children and adults, and we are not doing enough to stem the tide.
"The first order of business from Congress must be to fully fund WIC, which provides essential nutrition benefits to nearly seven million women and young children. WIC is one of our best lines of defense against nutrition insecurity, and Congress must ensure it remains available for anyone who needs it."
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