At This Women’s Prison, Inmates Grow, Harvest, and Eat Lettuce from a Vertical Farm
Food Tank features AmplifiedAg's reentry vertical farming initiative with South Carolina Department of Corrections and the Growing Justice program at Impact Justice
Food Tank sat down with David Flynn, CEO of AmplifiedAg, Rick Doran, Division Director of Agriculture for South Carolina’s Department of Corrections, and Kristina Bell, the Growing Justice Director at Impact Justice, to see what’s *growing on* at the Camille Graham Correctional women’s prison in Columbia, SC.
Incarcerated women at the prison are operating a vertical farm using AmplifiedAg container farms and technology paired with a 20-week educational reentry & program provided by Growing Justice.
This initiative not only provides an educational space for incarcerated women, but an opportunity to gain real agriculture skills development that they can take with them into the real world upon release.
Any time we can show people how to be more self-sustaining and understand where their food comes from and what goes into producing and harvesting and being safe with that food—it fits terrifically into the whole idea that when the ladies finally move out of the institutional setting. It helps keep recidivism lower, and that’s one of the big goals.