Live online | Hunger Action Month
What Changes When You Can Grow Your Own Fresh Food
Wednesday, September 23, 2026 | 2 p.m. ET
Can’t make it live? Register anyway and we’ll send you the recording.
Most organizations don’t stall on whether local food production is a good idea. They stall on the first step.
Organizations on the front line are seeing the scope of the hunger crisis up close, and it keeps growing. More families relying on food banks. More students who need a school meal to get through the day. More people walking into shelters that were already at capacity.
Fresh food is the hardest part of that to solve: it's the most expensive to source, the quality is whatever the supply chain hands you, and a painful share of it spoils before it reaches anyone.
What You’ll Learn
Practical answers from people who have already made the case internally, found the funding, and grown their first harvest.
The step-by-step path our panelists took, from first conversation to first harvest
What comes back: cost per pound, shelf life, volume, and what disappears from your spoilage numbers
How our panelists made the case internally, in numbers a board, council, or superintendent responds to
The funding avenues open right now, and what strong applications include
Who runs it day to day when nobody on staff is a farmer
Live Q&A
Hear from the People Who've Done It
Your Presenters
Dom Piccini
Director of Agricultural Programs, Connecticut Foodshare
Dom will share how shelf life and spoilage were quietly eating into Connecticut Foodshare's capacity to serve, and what changed once fresh food stopped being a race against the clock.
Evelyn Cerda
VP, Impact and Partnerships, Regina Food Bank
Evelyn championed Regina Food Bank’s local food project from first pitch through to operation. She’ll share how she made the case internally, the funding path they took, and what the project looks like today.
"With the [produce] that's coming out of the farms, we've done shelf life studies. In our containers, in our controlled environment, we can get three to four weeks, and there's no degradation to it whatsoever."
— Dom Piccini, Connecticut Foodshare
“During our winter months and being in Saskatchewan, our winters can last very long, and [Growcer] provided us with a solution for growing our own produce during those months where it’s tough to get fresh produce in Regina. So we decided we’re going to grow our own lettuce and make sure we have a consistent source of fresh produce that is highly nutritious. So our clients don’t have to always have canned products during those months.”
— Evelyn Cerda, Regina Food Bank
How Communities Like Yours Got Started
And knowing it’s possible for yours too.
Summer Street Farm
Food security and training | Nova Scotia
Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency · Provincial grants · Summer Street Foundation · Community donations
Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro South
Youth development | Massachusetts
State Food Security Infrastructure Grant · Health system grant · Private donations
Volunteers of America Upstate
Food security and workforce development programs | New York
ARPA grant · Community donations · County donation
City of Kingston
Food Security | Ontario
Revenue from parking fines · RBC · Growcer Fund’s Farm-as-a-Service
Get Growcer’s Funding Mobilization Team Behind Your Project
Help Us Help You
Funding is the biggest barrier for most community food projects, and it's the one we're built to help with. Tell us your vision, and our funding mobilization team will help you find the grants, foundations, and programs that fit, and reach out when new opportunities land on our radar.
$11M +
Secured for communities
50-70%
Success Rate
Industry average 10-15%
4x
More likely to get approved