USA: South Carolina Prison’s Vertical Farming Program Gets Grant To Help Pay Inmates

Skylar Laird

June 25, 2025

Green heads of lettuce line shelves from floor to ceiling in a gray container with bright LED lights. The photo is shot from the perspective of one end of the container, looking down rows of lettuce.

AmplifiedAg's vertical farms, grown in recycled shipping containers, grow lettuce in water instead of soil. Similar modules will be placed at Camille Graham women's prison later this year. (Provided/AmplifiedAg)

COLUMBIA — Beginning next month, inmates at South Carolina’s women’s prison will be able to receive agricultural training and a stipend upon release with the help of a statewide grant program.

The South Carolina philanthropy Power:Ed announced a $97,000 grant this month to the nonprofit Impact Justice, which is working with the state Department of Corrections to run the agricultural program at the state’s prison for women.

Beyond growing an expected 48,000 pounds of lettuce each year for the prison’s kitchens, the program is meant to train women in the fast-growing field of hydroponics, which means growing plants in water instead of soil, to help them get jobs soon after leaving prison.

Starting July 7, between 15 and 20 women incarcerated at Camille Griffin Graham Correctional Institution will begin a five-month course on food safety, agricultural technology and hydroponics, both in a classroom and through hands-on work, said Kelly Danner, who leads the program for California-based Impact Justice.

The first group of women will start work at an existing prison greenhouse while construction continues on the eight containers that will house the prison’s vertical farms. With $350,000 in state money and $850,000 from a private donation, the prison system got the initial go-ahead on the project in 2023.

The 9-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide containers should be ready for use this fall, Danner said.

Once a woman who has completed the program leaves prison, she will receive a $1,450 stipend for the training she’s already completed. That will equate to receiving the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for an estimated 200 hours of work she did while in prison.

That “should hopefully be a meaningful amount to help get them on their feet when they’re released,” Danner said.

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

A job using the skills each woman learned while incarcerated will hopefully be soon to follow, as a program manager coordinates with local agricultural businesses to help find the women steady employment, Danner said.

The grant, which was part of the $1 million Power:Ed distributes annually, will help cover the stipends, the program manager’s pay and food safety certifications for women in the program, said Claire Gibbons, executive director of Power:Ed, which is based in Columbia.

Impact Justice, through its Growing Justice program, will also help coordinate transportation, child care and housing for women in the program to ensure they’re able to get to work, Danner said.

“It’s not enough for us to offer robust training and place them in jobs if then they can’t sustain those jobs,” Danner said.

The ultimate goal is to keep the women from reoffending and going back to prison, as can often be the case when a person with no safety net leaves prison and finds themselves right back where they were before, if not worse off, Danner said.

That was a key reason Power:Ed decided to help fund the program. As the philanthropy arm of SC Student Loan Corp., Power:Ed looks for programs that bolster access to education and pathways to employment, which this program does, Gibbons said.

“Savings that meet basic needs, like housing, food, and support for children is the key to reentry success for women and enables a successful job placement and retention,” Gibbons said in a news release. “We hope it will become a workforce development model that can be replicated across South Carolina.”

The one-year grant from Power:Ed will help cover the costs for Impact Justice, which currently has enough money to fund the program for at least three years.

South Carolina already touts a low re-incarceration rate for recently released prisoners. Fewer than 1 in 5 inmates return to prison within three years of release, which is the lowest among states that report three-year recidivism rates, according to an annual report from Virginia’s prisons agency.

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State prison officials have credited the state’s job training and work programs with playing a large part in helping reduce its re-incarceration rates. Among those are other agricultural programs that teach inmates to train horses, milk dairy cows, tend row crops and harvest honey.

California-based Impact Justice is working to establish a similar program at a prison in Chowchilla, California, by the end of the year. Also in the works is a growing program to train people who have recently been released from prison in vertical farming, according to its website.

South Carolina’s program will be the first vertical farm on a prison’s campus in the country, state officials have said.

While the state offers other job training and reentry programs for inmates, Impact Justice’s goal is to create a more comprehensive service that could potentially expand to other prisons across both the state and the country, Danner said.

“Growing Justice is really a triple win,” said Alex Busansky, founder and president of Impact Justice, in a news release. “We’re equipping incarcerated women with the skills they need to thrive in a high-tech environment, seeding the South Carolina job market with new, qualified talent and delivering fresh produce to prison kitchens that typically lack access to locally grown fruits and vegetables.”