When household budgets get stretched, food is often one of the few expenses families can adjust. Rent is due, utilities have to be paid, and health care can’t always wait. So when income falls short or costs rise, families often have little choice but to spend less on food.

That pressure has long been familiar to lower-income families, but recent surveys suggest it is increasingly widespread. In Greater Washington, more than half of households say high food prices are having a major impact on their finances, and many are changing their spending to cope. Nationally, two-thirds say they are very concerned about the price of food and other consumer goods.

That makes measures of food insecurity especially important. Yet we have lost one of our most important tools for doing that.

For three decades, federal food security data showed who was struggling to afford enough food and where needs were greatest. Last September, USDA announced that it would end its annual household food insecurity reports. This fall, for the first time in decades, we do not have a new national snapshot.

Local anti-hunger leaders are helping fill part of the gap. New surveys from DC’s Capital Area Food Bank and the Greater Chicago Food Depository, both conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago, found strikingly similar levels of food insecurity: 38% of households in greater Washington and 36% in Chicago. Families with children are especially affected, and many food-insecure households include people who are working.

These regional snapshots offer important insights, but they cannot tell us how widespread those pressures are nationally or where needs are growing fastest. Congress or USDA could restore a national measure, giving policymakers and communities the information they need to see where hardship is greatest and how best to respond.

Stacy Dean
Carbonell Family Executive Director
Global Food Institute

A Better Way to Solve Food Challenges

What changes when we stop designing for communities and start designing with them? Our new toolkit with Swipe Out Hunger offers a practical, step-by-step workshop format for putting community expertise at the center of solving food problems. We’ll be sharing it this fall at the Capital Area Food Bank’s Regional College Hunger Conference. And our companion brief shows how students used the toolkit to develop solutions to campus food insecurity.

Using Data to Keep School Meals Moving

As part of our ongoing work in Haiti’s Central Plateau, GFI, Summits Education, and community partners are testing how data schools already collect—from food stocks to feeding days—can help flag shortages, recurring disruptions, and where support is needed most. A new research brief shows how these simple tools can help programs respond faster and keep meals reaching children.

The People Who Feed Us: Building a Fairer Food System

On October 1, our next Conversation on Food Justice with the Aspen Institute Food & Society Program will explore what a fairer food system could look like for the people who grow, harvest, transport, prepare, and serve our food—and the policies and models that could help shift power and opportunity across the food economy.

More than 1.2 million children have lost SNAP benefits since last July, according to a new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. GFI’s Director of Policy and Programs Priya Fielding-Singh spoke with PBS NewsHour about what that decline means for families, underscoring that SNAP is not merely supplemental for many households, but rather a core part of how families afford enough food for their children.

 

GROUNDSWELL Film Screening & Panel Conversation. On September 30 at GW, join us for the D.C. premiere of GROUNDSWELL. This Golden Globe winning film—the third in the Kiss the Ground series—follows farmers, ranchers, scientists, changemakers, and Indigenous leaders using regenerative agriculture to restore the planet one acre at a time. 

2026 Regional College Hunger Conference. On October 6 at the George Washington University, the Capital Area Food Bank will convene local higher education leaders, students, advocates, and community partners for its annual conference focused on addressing college food insecurity.

Hungry for Action Conference. On October 8 in Tulsa, Hunger Free Oklahoma will bring together advocates, policymakers, community organizations, and others working to address hunger and improve food access. GFI Executive Director Stacy Dean will speak at the event.

Fairtrade Month Celebration. On October 22 at the NoMa Art Garden in D.C., Fairtrade America will host a free celebration of the people behind our food, featuring Fairtrade-certified brands, farmers, music, performances, games, and the unveiling of a new mural.

2026 Global Child Nutrition Forum. From November 2–5 in Lusaka, Zambia, school meal leaders from around the world will gather for the Global Child Nutrition Foundation’s annual forum to exchange ideas, share experiences, and explore opportunities to strengthen school meal programs globally.

Help Us Grow GFI's Global Work. GFI is hiring a Director of Global Initiatives to help shape and grow our work on global food security, humanitarian response, and international development. Know someone who might be a great fit? Please share widely. The George Washington University

The Farm Labor Exception. As U.S. immigration policy has tightened, the H-2A program for seasonal agricultural workers has continued to grow. NPR’s Ximena Bustillo traces the history of agricultural labor in the United States and how it produced the unusual system farmers and farmworkers navigate today. NPR

What We Lose When Prevention Gets Cut. GFI’s Director of Research Emeritus Bill Dietz examines what cuts to federal chronic disease prevention could mean for the data, programs, and public health infrastructure communities rely on to address obesity and other chronic diseases. MedPage Today

Rethinking the Checkout Aisle. A new study of Berkeley’s healthy-checkout policy found that restricting sugary drinks and snacks from checkout lanes was associated with lower soda sales. The findings add to growing evidence that where foods are placed can shape what people buy. U.S. News & World Report

Funding Food as Medicine. Project DASH has launched a new fund to support organizations bringing nutritious food into patient care through programs such as produce prescriptions, medically tailored meals and groceries. Applications are due November 30. Project DASH

Avoiding the Next Famine. As global humanitarian needs grow, Anna Nelson and Cary Fowler examine what the United States can do to help prevent future famines. They make the case for investing in the systems and tools to anticipate and respond to food crises. Foreign Affairs

Global cereal yields have tripled since 1961, but progress has been uneven. Across much of Africa, yields remain less than half the global average, with implications for farmer incomes, food security, and biodiversity. This Our World in Data visualization explores the gap and why closing it matters.

We want to lift up your work and share information about events, opportunities to collaborate or whatever you think is important to share. Email us at globalfoodinstitute@gwu.edu. 

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