Rows of lettuce sit in a recycled shipping container at Camille Griffin Graham Correctional in Columbia, S.C., on Thursday, March 19, 2026. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Seven shipping containers sit outside a South Carolina women’s prison. Inside four, amid the lights and fans, grow stacked rows of lettuce in various stages of their lifecycle.
The farm, publicly celebrated Thursday, is the first of its kind at a prison in the country. Along with teaching inmates agricultural and life skills, the program could serve as a model for prisons and companies across the country to create their own vertical farms.
Work began in the shipping containers in January, with inmates harvesting around 3,500 heads of lettuce every Thursday.
By the end of the year, they expect to harvest more than 40,000 pounds of lettuce — far more than they would growing the same number of crops spread horizontally instead of vertically. Crops in the shipping containers grow more quickly than it would in a field, with a head of lettuce taking about 40 days to mature instead of the usual 60 or so.
Inmates start with seeds in a small pod of soil, which spend about two weeks sprouting in one of the shipping containers.
Once a head of green is visible, the women move the sprouts to another container, where they grow in vertical rows of five beneath strips of LED lights. A pump circulates water encasing the plants’ roots, while fans set up along the narrow rows provide airflow.
The produce, once harvested, goes back to Camille Griffin Graham Correctional, one of the state’s prisons for women, and two other prisons on the same complex.
That saves the prison system money on greens and gives inmates access to freshly grown food, said Alex Busansky, president of nonprofit Impact Justice, which is helping operate the farm.
The state contributed $350,000 to the program, and an anonymous donor gave another $850,000.
Women inside the prison used to look forward to meals with chicken, said Bonnie, one of the 14 women working on the farm. These days, their favorite meals are the ones that come with fresh lettuce.
“They eat it with or without dressing,” Bonnie told the SC Daily Gazette, which agreed to follow Corrections policy and not release identifying details about the inmate, including her last name.
What first enticed Bonnie to the five-month course was the pay, she said.
With support from a $97,000 grant from South Carolina philanthropy group Power:Ed, inmates who complete the program, named Fresh Start Produce, will receive $1,450 once they leave prison. That equates to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for each of the 200 hours of work expected.
That’s on top of days off inmates’ sentences, which they receive for all prison work programs. Many of the prison system’s work centers around agriculture, including farming row crops, milking cows and tending horses.
Soon after joining, Bonnie realized the program’s benefits went far beyond pay, she said.
Along with the hands-on work of planting, propagating and picking lettuce, inmates take classes about the specifics of farming, as well as more general skills.
By the time they finish the course, the women should have a good base knowledge of food safety, how to plan a farm and how to run an agricultural business, said David Flynn, who leads vertical farming company AmplifiedAg, which donated the equipment and technology to start the program.
Bonnie doesn’t expect to get a job in agriculture directly once she leaves prison. She dreams of opening a transitional home for women who are leaving prison or recovering from addiction.
After realizing how therapeutic it is to work outside with her hands, she wants to incorporate some sort of gardening into that plan to teach other women similar skills, she said.
“Lots of women are going out into nothing,” Bonnie said. With the program, though, “they’re provided with a start.”
A big component of the program is job training. Hydroponics is an expanding field, and teaching inmates farming skills could help them get a more general job in agriculture, which is a major challenge for many companies, said Department of Agriculture Commissioner Hugh Weathers.
More farmers might be interested in trying out hydroponic farming, which allows people to harvest crops they might not otherwise have the space or soil to grow, if it works at the prison, Weathers said.
“We’re excited about what we see on the horizon,” Weathers said.
Beyond the practical skills inmates learn, the program’s aim is to help them become better than they were when they came into the system, said Joel Anderson, director of the prisons system.
He likened the healing process to the process of growing lettuce. When women enter the prison, they have the roots for rehabilitation, but they haven’t yet grown into their full potential. Getting there is a process, but by the time they’re ready to leave, they have blossomed into something beautiful, he said.
“It’s a great thing to have here,” Anderson said of the program.
The women Bonnie works with hold each other accountable to show up and do their best. Having work to accomplish every day instills in them determination, perseverance and problem-solving skills they often didn’t learn before coming to prison, she said, tearing up as she spoke about it.
“It’s really a blessing,” she said.
Inmates who get job training are more likely to find employment outside of prison and thus less likely to get arrested again, Anderson said. South Carolina has one of the lowest rates of inmates who reoffend in the country, with 20% of those released in 2022 to prison returning within three years, according to the prisons agency.
California-based Impact Justice hopes to use South Carolina as a model for prisons across the country to start similar programs. Construction on a similar farm is underway at a California women’s prison, and more could join after seeing if the model works, Busansky said.
“Today marks the start of something exciting,” he said.
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
