The budget crisis faced by the state over the last two years has affected many things, including the farming operation at Caledonia Correctional Institution in Tillery.
“Correction Enterprises is 100 percent receipt support and has suffered a significant loss of revenue during the budget crises of the last two years,” state Department of Correction spokesman Keith Acree said.
As a result, Correction Enterprises has been forced to downsize some of its operations. The Caledonia Farm has always been a financial burden for Correction Enterprises, losing approximately $1.5 million a year for the past several years, Acree explained.
“Over the past eight months, Correction Enterprises has implemented a number of cost containment measures to alleviate some of this drain.”
The farm, however, is not closing and the mission of the operations remains the same.
There are changes, Acree said, and that includes phasing out all of Caledonia’s cattle operations to free up pasture land which the state will lease to local farmers.
The department will also discontinue its Perdue Chicken operations at Odom Correctional Institution in Northampton County. “These houses were aging and would have required extensive upgrades in order to continue our contract with Perdue. We have not changed our raising of layer hens and harvesting their eggs for consumption by the inmate population,” Acree said.
The prison has also increased the acreage leased to outside farmers from more than 500 acres to 1,900 acres, acreage that was being used for the production of non-inmate related food crops such as soybeans, wheat and other crops.
Along with the changes, 12 staff positions at the farm were lost, the losses absorbed by attrition rather than reductions in force, Acree said.
Correction Enterprises remains committed to using inmate labor to raise food crops for consumption. “We are still operating the cannery, fresh produce operation, brooder houses, chicken laying facilities and vegetable crop production. We are also still growing wetland plants and day lilies for the Department of Transportation,” Acree said.
