A group of Montgomery County residents wants to connect everyone in the county who cares about food — whether they buy it, sell it or grow it — and the county government is helping them do it. The county’s proposed Food Council would connect different parts of the county’s “food system,” said Bruce Adams, the director of the Montgomery County Office of Community Partnerships who has been organizing the group.
“The food system is so broad and touches so many things,” he said. The Food Council would connect immigrant workers with the residents of the county’s Agricultural Reserve and the people who are knowledgeable about healthy foods.
The food council so far has been funded through a $25,000 grant from the county and a $13,000 grant from the Mead Family Foundation, said Food Council Coordinator Claire Cummings. The group in the future would be funded through the Community Foundation, a private nonprofit organization that operates largely through private donations.
The council, which wouldn’t be a government department or agency, should receive “minimal money” from the county in the future, said County Councilman George Leventhal, D-at large, who introduced a resolution supporting the food group that the council is scheduled to vote on Tuesday.
Similar groups have been established across the country, in cities like Birmingham, Ala., Los Angeles, Boulder, Colo., Chicago and Baltimore. Many of the groups are primarily advisory, but Montgomery’s Food Council will have a more hands-on approach, said Cummings, who worked with a food council in Portland, Ore.
The organization will facilitate projects to help bolster locally grown food, she explained.
Several people involved say they would like to connect farmers with Montgomery County Public Schools, for example — not only to get locally grown produce into school lunches but also to help students learn about farming, said Caroline Taylor, Montgomery Countryside Alliance executive director and one of the founding members of the advisory board charged with creating the Food Council.
The council also could help connect local farmers with restaurants or grocery stores, Adams said.
However, some farmers say the group is a nice idea but impractical.
“We are a farm that sells directly to the average, normal person that walks in,” said Stephanie Scuderi, who runs Fox Hollow Farm in Gaithersburg. “I wouldn’t have enough meat to supply a restaurant.”
Selling to a restaurant also involves taking her 9-year-old daughter as she drives an hour each way to deliver the products, which would take her away from her duties at the farm.
For Nancy O’Keefe, the owner of O’Keefe Orchard in Silver Spring, the help of such a group is simply unnecessary for her small-scale operation.
“We can sell everything we have,” she said. “It would be good if we needed it, I guess.”
