Budget conference: Senate, House miles apart on food bank funding

Two major food banks in Florida may be starved of support if the Legislature doesn’t strike an agreement over their funding in the coming state spending plan.

The Senate wants to give Feeding Florida $38 million and Farm Share an $8 million apportionment in the 2025-26 budget.

The House is sticking with zero for both.

In its first cross-rotunda offer on the line items Wednesday, the lower chamber offered nothing in response to the Senate’s earmark proposal.

There’s still time for the chambers to come to terms.

The Feeding Florida-focused funds would go toward Farmers Feeding Florida, a product recovery initiative the nonprofit runs in partnership with local growers, ranchers, packers and brokers to rescue and distribute excess or unmarketable products to in-need families.

Over its history, the program has recovered and distributed more than 246 million pounds of fresh Florida fruits and vegetables, while the program offsets a portion of production costs to enable farmers and growers to scale up donations to multiple truckload quantities.

The Senate budget (SB 2500) says the $38 million would be provided to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which would administer a competitive grant program into which Farmers Feeding Florida participants can tap.

There’s even a political conflict-of-interest safeguard in place prohibiting people who run for office from hosting a food distribution event after qualifying for their given contest, if they aren’t running unopposed. That rule doesn’t apply when the event is in response to a direct emergency.

The Farm Share portion, meanwhile, would fulfill funding requests submitted this year by Sen. Ed Hooper and Rep. Adam Anderson, both Palm Harbor Republicans.

Hooper’s request sought the full $8 million. Anderson more modestly asked for $6.5 million. Both would add to an expected $3.2 million federal contribution, $900,000 from local sources and $2 million from elsewhere.

Farm Share facilitates nearly 20,000 community food distributions across the state yearly to people in high-poverty communities. Hooper’s request said the funding would help more than 86 million meals to be served in the next fiscal year.

According to Feeding America, Florida has a 14.4% food insecurity rate. It’s even worse for children (18.4%).