Every fall for about three decades, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a report looking at household food security around the country. But after releasing a final report on Oct. 22, the USDA won’t produce any more of them.

To prepare the report, the Census Bureau asked some 30,000 people questions about food, hunger, and money. It then broke down their answers by household income, state, and whether the individual used government food assistance.

The USDA says it’s “terminating” these reports, because they are “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous.”

“You know, I'm really shocked by this,” said Colleen Heflin, who researches economic measures of wellbeing at Syracuse University. “I don't think it uses any adjectives at all. It's a very dry read, purposefully. It's not a political document; it doesn't give any policy recommendations. It is just the facts as good federal statistics should be.”

Helfin said researchers have used the report, as have food security organizations on the ground.

“They may take their state data and advocate with their congressional offices, or they may be looking at specific populations,” said Minerva Delgado, director of coalitions and advocacy at the Alliance to End Hunger.

There aren’t many other data sets that study food security — and insecurity — in as much depth, she added. “I think it's going to make it harder all around to really measure what the impacts of the policies of this particular administration are.”

A USDA spokesperson pointed us to the department’s original announcement of the end of the report.