Arkansas has the highest hunger rate in the nation. We know this because our federal government measures it — officially referred to as food insecurity — and publishes the results each year. With this data, we’re able to compare our rates to other states, helping to inform decisions here in Arkansas about policies and programs that might ensure more children have the quality nutrition they need to grow up healthy and thrive.

Correction: We used to be able to do this.

The federal government has decided no longer to collect and publish this information because it “became overly politicized.” Ironically, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced this in a highly politicized press release issued on Saturday, September 20.

The USDA announced it would stop funding the Food Security Supplement in the annual Current Population Survey. The data that will be released next month will be the last, at least for a while. A likely outcome of this decision is that Arkansas will have a less clear picture of the consequences of policy decisions, both at the state and federal level.

This is all happening just a couple of months after Congress slashed $187 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which will result in millions of people losing food benefits for their families. Here in Arkansas, we estimate that 25,000 Arkansans will lose their SNAP benefits once these changes are fully in place in the next few months. The new law will also require Arkansas to foot the bill for tens of millions of dollars to keep the SNAP program going here. (More information on the state-level impact of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is available here).

It seems no coincidence that they’ve chosen now to stop counting and publishing this federal hunger data. But we know that the government can’t hide hunger by refusing to count it. The people who are unsure how they’re going to afford enough nutritionally adequate food for their families (the definition of food insecurity) will still exist. After the drastic cuts to SNAP go through, there will be exponentially more. We just won’t have the data to confirm it.

At Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, we know that what we measure matters. If we’re not counting and measuring — everything from child poverty to the number of children in foster care or the number of children without health insurance — then we’re making decisions blindly without adequate information.

Good data informs good policy. Canceling the data won’t cancel hunger.