Reuters – Hunger reached its highest point in the United States in nearly a decade last year, with 18 million households, or 13.5 percent, struggling at some point to secure enough food, a Department of Agriculture report released on Wednesday said.

Hunger has been on the rise in the country since 2021, after years of decline. U.S. Census Bureau data last year showed a rise in food insecurity after the end of programs that expanded food aid during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report did not provide an explanation for the increase.

Anti-hunger group Feeding America found in May that hungry people in the United States were facing a $33.1 billion shortfall in money to meet their food needs, in part due to higher food prices.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement that Congress was to blame for failing to pass an expanded child tax credit this year and expanding work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation’s largest food aid program, last year.

“For anyone to go hungry in America is unacceptable,” he said.

Expanding federal food aid and the child tax credit would help address the problem, anti-hunger groups have said.

“Reducing and eliminating hunger in America will not happen overnight, but the policies necessary to do so are not a mystery,” Eric Mitchell, president of the Alliance to End Hunger, said in a statement.

One million more households were food insecure in 2023 than in 2022, the USDA report said.

About 6.8 million of the 18 million households suffering food insecurity experienced very low food security, meaning the diets of one or more household members were disrupted during the year because they could not afford to buy enough food.

To learn more, read Feast and Famine in America.