A disheartening report from the U.S. Agriculture Department has unveiled a significant increase in food insecurity among U.S. households in 2022, marking a troubling departure from the years-long trend of decreasing hunger.
The report, which casts a bleak shadow on the state of food security in the United States, indicated that millions more households, including 1 million more households with children, encountered difficulties in accessing an adequate food supply last year.
This uptick has disrupted the prior trend of declining hunger in the country, a trend that had been observed and documented by both food banks and the U.S. Census Bureau. The rise in food insecurity is attributed to the struggles of low-income individuals attempting to recover from the profound impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and the conclusion of expanded food assistance programs.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, in response to the report, emphasized the critical importance of maintaining a robust safety net and expressed his concern about the data’s implications. He described the situation as “unacceptable.”
The report, while lacking a detailed explanation for the rise in food insecurity, revealed that 12.8% of households, equivalent to 17 million households, grappled with food shortages last year. This is a significant increase from 10.2%, or 13.5 million households, in 2021.
Additionally, the report disclosed that nearly 7 million households experienced very low food security in 2022. This level of food insecurity implies that residents’ typical eating patterns were disrupted, or their food intake decreased due to limited resources, according to the Agriculture Department.
The consequences of this food insecurity extended to households with children, with 3.3 million such households experiencing food insecurity at times during 2022, marking an increase from the 2.3 million households with children affected in 2021.
