Freeing Vegetables from Southern Prison Farms

by Hanna Raskin, Posted Aug 11th 2009 @ 5:00PM

Cotton in the Mississippi Delta. Photo: Natalie Maynor, Flickr

A national organization devoted to combating hunger has found a way to wring good works from the South's most notorious prison farms.

The Mississippi office of the Society of St. Andrew, which identifies itself as "America's premier food salvage ministry," last month joined with the Mississippi Food Network to start collecting surplus produce from the Mississippi State Penitentiary -- commonly known as Parchman Farm -- and distributing it to 350 food pantries across the state.

"It's a win-win situation," program coordinator Jackie Usey reports. The program has already collected 40,000 pounds of squash from Parchman's fields.

Prison farms flourished in the South following the abolition of convict leasing, a system that allowed private companies to pay states for inmate labor. By the 1920s, most Southern states had established vast penal complexes styled after antebellum slave plantations. While court-ordered reforms have substantially improved conditions at prisons like Parchman, convicted rapists and thieves continue to farm its 18,000 acres.

"Gosh, I think they grow a little bit of everything," Usey says. "They feed the inmate population."

Prison authorities today stress the rehabilitative aspect of agricultural work: Correctional departments in Michigan, New York and California have established gardens for the sole purpose of growing food for charity.

But Usey says many Southern states cite cost as the primary rationale behind prison farming. In 2007, Georgia's prison farms produced all of the beef, pork, eggs, milk, grits and cornmeal needed to feed its inmates.

Most commercial farms that work with the Society of St. Andrew donate the veggies they can't sell -- square melons or bruised apples, for example -- to the charity. Parchman, on the other hand, will serve misshapen veggies to its inmates, but the farm often produces more food than its inmates can consume, leaving a surplus for donation.

While Usey says her organization doesn't send any volunteers to the prison, she's happy to provide outbound transportation for the extra veggies. "There aren't any other programs like this in Mississippi," she says proudly.

Filed Under: Farming, Ingredients
Tags: charity, cotton, farming, mississippi, prison farms, prison food, PrisonFarms, PrisonFood, prisons, southern states, vegetables