Oregon was in for a rude awakening one October morning 26 years ago. That day, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its first ever ranking of states by levels of hunger. Oregon came out worst in the nation.

To our state’s credit, the information galvanized action. Over the next few years, policymakers implemented changes making it easier for people to access food stamps, efforts that succeeded in bringing down hunger levels. As Oregon’s experience shows, timely data is essential for understanding and addressing big problems like food insecurity. 

But now, following the decision by Congress to enact the largest cuts to food assistance in our nation’s history, the Trump administration has announced it will no longer release the data that measures food insecurity in Oregon and nationally —  a dangerous ploy to keep the nation in the dark as to the struggles of families to put food on the table. If the administration follows through with its threat, Oregon should fill the information void.

Right now, one in seven Oregonians struggles to put food on the table, according to a yearly survey conducted by the Census Bureau. This survey allows the U.S. Department of Agriculture to estimate the rate of food insecurity across the country and at the state level. 

Last month, however, USDA announced that this year’s food insecurity report will be the last. The department claimed the data is “overly politicized” and “rife with inaccuracies.” Given the report’s longstanding use across presidential administrations, one can’t help but wonder if the real reason it’s being axed is fear over what it would show in the coming years.

In July, Republicans in Congress passed H.R. 1, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The Republican budget bill slashed nearly $190 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), previously called “food stamps,” our nation’s first line of defense against hunger. The cuts to SNAP and other safety net programs were made to partly offset the cost of massive tax cuts mainly going to the wealthy and to expand the Trump administration’s deportation apparatus.

Some of the cuts to SNAP are already in effect. As of October 1, six Oregon counties now require “able-bodied adults without dependents” to prove they deserve food assistance by documenting their work activities. These added layers of bureaucracy can make accessing food assistance incredibly burdensome. Those who do navigate the red tape are limited to just three months of food assistance in a three-year period. These work requirements will take effect statewide on January 1. 

More cuts are also coming. Some 29,000 households will see their food assistance slashed because they will no longer be eligible for critical utility allowances. Thousands of refugees, asylees, victims of trafficking, and other lawfully present immigrants will lose food assistance entirely. All told, more than 313,000 Oregonians will see their food assistance cut or taken away, leaving them hungry. 

If this year’s food insecurity survey is the last, it will constitute a return to the dark ages, when the nation did not collect information on food insecurity on a regular, timely basis. The current Census Bureau survey on food insecurity came into being in the mid-1990s. Before then, confusion prevailed. 

In 1984, the Task Force on Food Assistance convened by then President Ronald Regan issued a report stating, “There is no official ‘hunger count’ to estimate the number of hungry people, and so there are no hard data to estimate the extent of hunger directly.” This “lack of definitive, quantitative proof,” the report added, “contributes to a climate in which policy discussions become unhelpfully heated and unsubstantiated assertions are substituted for hard information.”

Given the Trump administration’s threat to plunge the nation into darkness when it comes to basic information regarding hunger levels, Oregon should strike its own course toward the light. Governor Kotek should prioritize the creation of a new Oregon survey aimed at better understanding how Oregonians are meeting their basic needs. Such a survey could offer rich data to help better understand the impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill in the coming years. 

Such a survey could also help us think bigger. It could help us design a modern safety net, built for helping all Oregonians meet their basic needs.

One thing is clear: more Oregonians will go hungry as a result of the Republican budget bill passed earlier this year. We may not need the data to be clear on that, but we will certainly need better data in order to develop our response.