Food Insecurity

Boca Helping Hands, which serves 35,000 people a year with food, job training and financial assistance, was already feeling the pressure from earlier federal budget cuts and a significant drop in food donations.

In Florida, it’s estimated that around one million children and more than 1,000 schools could lose access to free meals if changes to the Community Eligibility Provision are adopted.

A bill in the Florida Legislature would set up a yearlong “Hunger-Free Campus” pilot program at three state colleges or universities.

The 2025 report by the Florida Policy Institute ranks counties on five factors, with the newest being food security.

Feeding South Florida CEO Paco Vélez says food-insecure families face a holiday season where they have to make a choice between paying for housing and medications over food and gifts for their children.

Florida Keys food pantries are struggling to stay stocked up at a time when they’re seeing demand for food nearly double. “The bottom line is Monroe is really starving right now,” said the CEO of the largest food pantry operator in the Keys.

Millions of children are going without extra food on the table this summer, after 13 states said no to joining a federal program that helps families in need buy groceries.

Florida opted out of the program for 2024 earlier this year. It's estimated the state lost out on around $250 million in food benefits for families.

Congress is considering a bill that would boost tax breaks for low-income families with children. The proposal is still awaiting action by the U.S. Senate.

The newest food benefits program under the U.S. Department of Agriculture will officially launch in the summer of 2024. The deadline for states to sign up was Jan. 1.

Eating is a basic physiological need. How that need is met is, increasingly often, is dependent on income. Between two public universities in the same Florida city, income and access lines can be as pronounced as the railroad tracks that divide them.

Nonprofit Feeding South Florida tells WLRN even middle-class families are asking for help during the holidays in this affordability crisis, while some kids worry about not having school meals during holiday breaks.