SC women’s prison to grow lettuce in recycled shipping containers

COLUMBIA — A women’s prison in Columbia could soon grow 48,000 pounds of lettuce yearly in a farming operation touted as the first of its kind in the country.

The $1.2 million project will both reduce prison cafeteria costs and provide inmates skills for farming jobs after they’re released, according to the state Department of Corrections.

These aren’t traditional farms, where rows of crops grow out in the sun. Instead, plants are stacked on shelves, their roots immersed in water instead of soil. The method makes farming possible in spaces that are too small or don’t have the correct soil for row crops.

Plans call for Camille Griffin Graham Correctional to receive eight modified shipping containers from AmplifiedAg, a Charleston-based company that specializes in vertical farming and hydroponics.

Each is about 9 feet tall by 8 feet wide. Lettuce will be grown and harvested in three of them. New plants will be propagated in one. Food safety and processing operations will occupy the others.

The structures could arrive at the prison as early as summer 2024. The exact timing will depend on final approval by the state’s fiscal oversight board.

The board chaired by Gov. Henry McMaster gave initial approval last month to spending $350,000 in state taxes on the project. An anonymous donor gave $850,000.

“It’ll offset our food costs, but the real win here will be for the folks who are trained,” Corrections Director Bryan Stirling told the State Fiscal Accountability Authority during the Oct. 17 meeting. “They will get jobs when they leave, and they will work while they’re there.”

Housed inside recycled insulated shipping containers, like those on- and offloaded at the Charleston port, plants will grow in five rows stacked from floor to ceiling under LED lights. Fans at the end of each row of lettuce provide airflow, while a pump circulates the water encasing the plants’ roots.

The roughly 30 inmates who plant, monitor, harvest and package the lettuce will earn both work credits, which can buy time off a sentence, and a certificate showing they’ve been trained in hydroponics.

Camille will receive the same structures that AmplifiedAg supplies to nonprofits, research teams and private farmers, so inmates will learn skills that will transfer to a job outside prison, said David Flynn, the company’s vice president of business development.

“From a business perspective, it’s much the same,” Flynn said.

Temperature, nutrient levels and other growing conditions are controlled within each unit, allowing Corrections officials to set production levels.

Overseen by the Department of Agriculture, the farms should produce about 48,000 pounds of lettuce yearly, harvested in 21-day intervals per container. That’s enough to feed about 4,000 inmates weekly who choose to eat salads offered daily for lunch and dinner.

South Carolina’s prisons already have several farming operations. At the minimum-security Wateree River Correctional Institution in rural Sumter County, inmates farm row crops, milk cows and produce beef. At medium-security Allendale Correctional Institution, inmates learn how to harvest honey.

If the program at Camille is successful, hydroponic growing could expand to prisons across the state, providing more opportunities for training and further reducing cafeteria costs, Flynn said.

The number of jobs in the field is growing, said Lance Beecher, a hydroponics specialist for Clemson Extension.

AmplifiedAg runs the largest vertical farming operation in South Carolina under Vertical Roots, which has locations in Charleston and Columbia as well as Atlanta. Heron Farms uses a similar system to grow sea beans in Charleston using saltwater.

“For the prison systems to be able to begin generating farmers who understand how to run the software … and really control the entire flow of an indoor farm, I think is a fantastic win all the way around,” said AmplifiedAg CEO Don Taylor.