Food Shortage
© PressTV
A report released by the US Department of Agriculture has revealed that the national average rate of American households reporting "food insecurity" was 14.7 percent between 2010 and 2012.

The figure is more than one percent higher than that for the previous three-year period.

According to the USDA data, Nevada has the highest rate of food insecurity in the US, with 16.6 percent of households reporting food insecurity. Nevada is followed by California, Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.

People report "food insecurity" when they run short of food and are uncertain about where it will come from next.

The USDA study also showed that 59 percent of food insecure families in the US were on one or more of federal food or nutrition assistance programs in the previous month.

A new Gallup survey has also revealed that 20 percent of Americans said in August they "lacked enough money to buy the food that they or their families needed during the past year."

This comes as US lawmakers in the House of Representatives are to vote in the coming days on cutting the country's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamp program, by nearly 5 percent over 10 years.

"There are 50 million people in the United States of America who are hungry, 17 million are kids," Rep. Jim McGovern from Massachusetts said.

"It is something we all should be ashamed of, and the United States House of Representatives is about to make that worse," he added.