Every year, Correction Enterprises donates surplus cans of produce from the Caledonia Farm cannery operation at Caledonia Correctional Institution in Tillery to food banks for distribution to needy individuals and groups.
On Tuesday, Correction Enterprises donated two truckloads of goods to the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina in Raleigh for Hurricane Harvey victim relief in Texas and, possibly, to Floridians hit by Hurricane Irma through an organization called Feeding America. The donated goods included 300 cases of canned sweet potatoes; 352 cases of canned green beans; 300 cases of canned baked beans; 66 cases of disinfectant; and 52,800 bars of soap.
Correction Enterprises Director Karen Brown said, “Our staff and inmates are very proud to partner with the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina and Feeding America to help hurricane victims.”
The cans were 105 ounces each, with all the vegetables grown at the 8,000-acre farm at Caledonia Correctional Institution. The farm helps feed the state’s 36,000 inmates.
“We must plan for a small surplus each year to ensure we never run out of food,” said Phillip Sykes, Correction Enterprises’ farm and food products general manager. “These cans contain food that was grown last year and we are now in the process of producing food from this year’s crop.”
According to Sykes, each year Correction Enterprises donates between two to 15 truckloads of fresh produce grown on the farm to food banks, depending on whether “we have a bumper crop,” he said.
“We had a few hundred cases of several products that were canned last fall in surplus. We had 300-400 cases of sweet potatoes in inventory from last year’s crop, and we are going to harvest this year’s crop in the next week or so and could afford to donate some and not run out of inventory for prisons,” said Sykes.
Carter Crain, the product logistics manager for the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina, said the organization is very appreciative of its relationship with Correction Enterprises.
“We hope to ship this out by the end of this week or next week,” Crain said. “This is great and will help many people.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: Correction Enterprises, a division of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, operates 31 production facilities within North Carolina state prisons to produce goods for state prison consumption, as well as other state and local government entities, and nonprofits within the state.
PHOTO: Workers haul a pallet of soap boxes from one of the trucks for distribution to hurricane victims.
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