Dairy farmers can face significant surplus when demand for fluid milk drops, especially when schools close for holidays, spring break and summer vacation. At the same time, families and children can lose access to school-based meals. Feeding Florida helps bridge that gap by recovering surplus dairy products and moving them through Florida’s food bank network.

In the Summer of 2025, when a production plant unexpectedly shut down, four full tankers of Florida milk were stranded and at risk of being dumped. In less than an hour, the Farmers Feeding Florida team worked with Southeast Milk Cooperative and M&B Products to reroute the milk to M&B’s Hillsborough County facility. All four tankers were recovered, saving nearly 300,000 eight-ounce servings of milk from going to waste.

Seasonal recovery efforts have also made a major impact. During Spring Break, Farmers Feeding Florida helped distribute 256,000 gallons of milk, 258,000 yogurt cups and 107,000 cartons of drinkable yogurt. During this past summer, the program recovered and distributed another 396,915 gallons of milk.

By connecting surplus dairy with community need, the program supports Florida dairy farmers while keeping Florida-produced milk in Florida. This is the new face of milk recovery in Florida.

Florida’s produce growers are some of our longest-standing partners in the recovery model. They can face significant challenges when circumstances create more product than the traditional market can absorb. Weather can disrupt a crop, only for conditions to improve and production to rebound when the market is no longer prepared for the volume. Market shifts can also leave a crop oversupplied with nowhere to go, while an exceptionally strong growing season can produce yields well beyond what traditional buyers can take.

This is why Feeding Florida works to help farmers protect the value of what they grow while making sure nutritious food reaches communities across the state, as was the case for Florida watermelon growers following a seasonal market oversupply. Farmers Feeding Florida provided funding to recover 1.5 million pounds of surplus watermelons that may otherwise have gone unsold, unharvested or to waste.

The recovery supported 12 Florida watermelon enterprises (and numerous small family farms) and created a dependable market outlet for high-quality, harvest-ready fruit.

The produce recovery efforts this past fiscal year were particularly important for growers who had already faced the added expense of replanting fields after multiple freeze events earlier in the season. By helping move surplus production, Farmers Feeding Florida provided an important source of support while ensuring fresh Florida watermelons reached families experiencing food insecurity.

Florida egg farmers often have high-quality products that are overlooked by traditional retail buyers. Larger-size eggs, for example, may not meet retail preferences even though they remain nutritious and valuable.

In the second quarter alone, the Egg Recovery Program moved more than 377,100 dozen eggs into the hunger-relief network. That means thousands of dozen eggs that could have become stranded inventory instead became a reliable source of high-quality protein for families across Florida.