CFFC wins county grant as part of efforts to expand food production and education

CFFC is proud to be part of an awesome group of local organizations that are working to reduce food insecurity in Montgomery County. We are deeply grateful to the Office of Food Systems Resilience for its generous funding for these efforts and our projects.

We were invited to talk to the press about our work. Below is the transcript of the speech our co-founder, Amy Zimmermann, gave at the press conference on October 14th 2026.

Good morning. My name is Amy, and I’m part of the Community Food Forest Collective.

A community food forest is a special way of growing food: it’s an edible garden designed like a forest, with layers of fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, herbs, vegetables, and ground covers. So you have a lot of food growing densely in layers and most of it is perennial - producing more food each year and becoming more self-sustaining for years to come.

We grow a great mix of food like apples, figs, persimmons, berries, greens and herbs, along with some special treats like a hot pepper that’s been passed down in a local Cambodian family for generations. We build these gardens communally on local public school land, working together as a community and the harvest is free for the community.

Since 2022, we’ve planted food forests at Takoma Park Elementary and Montgomery College Silver Spring campus. This grant is enabling us to expand on that success: We will nearly double the Takoma Park Elementary food forest starting with fruit trees going in the ground this weekend. With Koiner, we are preparing to plant a new food forest at Loiederman Middle School, and we are beginning a community design process for a future food forest at East Silver Spring Elementary.

We chose these sites specifically because of the need to improve food security. At many of these schools, around half of students experience food insecurity or qualify for free or reduced meals - as high as 82% of students at East Silver Spring. We are able to provide a source of fresh, local, free fruits and vegetables to supplement the work of food pantries and other important programs in our region.

In addition to growing food, it’s equally important to us that we grow something else - community. We host a huge variety of workshops and events at our gardens, from gardening skills to cooking different cuisines to festivals, and they are really popular. Last year, we drew nearly 700 people, including hundreds of children and volunteers. A highlight is the way it brings people together - at one herbalism workshop led by a Zimbabwean practitioner we had around half the participants from the local African community learning alongside half from all kinds of other communities, and people stayed for hours afterward to keep the conversations going. This grant helps grow this kind of work, supporting a series of bilingual Spanish-English workshops that we are kicking off in partnership with CHEER. It has truly felt like these food forests were the right idea at the right time, and they draw so many people in.

In addition to growing food, it’s equally important to us that we grow something else - community. We host a huge variety of workshops and events at our gardens, from gardening skills to cooking different cuisines to festivals, and they are really popular. Last year, we drew nearly 700 people, including hundreds of children and volunteers. A highlight is the way it brings people together - at one herbalism workshop led by a Zimbabwean practitioner we had around half the participants from the local African community learning alongside half from all kinds of other communities, and people stayed for hours afterward to keep the conversations going. This grant helps grow this kind of work, supporting a series of bilingual Spanish-English workshops that we are kicking off in partnership with CHEER. It has truly felt like these food forests were the right idea at the right time, and they draw so many people in.

So thank you to Montgomery County and the Office of Food Systems Resilience and to the other great grant recipients here today many of whom are close partners of ours. This work is not something we could do alone - it’s truly a movement that we are all building together. Thank you. And please come visit us in the food forest, we’d love to see you!

And you can read more about the county’s work to expand food production here.