Anna Pope

Is there going to be somebody there?

Is there going to be somebody handling things?

And so at least that was the concern for a lot of the farm groups here.

So I was really wanting to pay attention to that.

And I've talked to some folks who were impacted by the actions taken or took the federal buyout.

And so just really wanting to stay on top of that reporting, not just do it at the beginning when it was happening and everybody was trying to digest it, but also like what actually did happen and what is happening now.

Yeah.

So last year, the USDA, there was a really short press release.

There was a lot of talk about this hunger report that was going to go away.

And so I hopped on that story.

And now the report, the last one, unless, you know, somebody starts again, has been released.

And it shows that Oklahoma is sixth in the nation.

We usually are top...

like five in the nation when in terms of hunger.

And so it's really important for my state to, you know, because of those statistics to understand kind of what's going on.

And when I talk to researchers about and people that deal with addressing hunger in the United States, they say that this report is really one of a kind.

There's not another report that does what this report says.

It's not as comprehensive.

And then folks that are trying to address hunger, they say, you know, how are we going to make effective policy decisions if we don't know what's happening?

And so I think that story is super important to folks that are trying to work in that space and trying to understand it more.