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PORTSIDE CULTURE

FARM-TO-PRISON CUISINE  
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Liz Susman Karp
October 17, 2025
Ambrook.com
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_ Using nutritious, local ingredients in a prison setting to cook
food from scratch is far from the norm. MVRCF is one of a handful of
correctional facilities throughout the country serving fresh food
crafted from area products. _

Farms are at the center of a niche but growing movement, transforming
the food served in carceral institutions. , Graphic by Adam Dixon

 

Last summer, Marshal P., a prisoner and cook at the Marble Valley
Regional Correctional Facility (MVRCF) in Rutland, Vermont, prepared
tomato sauce from scratch, using 300 pounds of tomatoes grown at a
farm nearby. “It’s actually cool to make it all fresh,” he said

Marshal, who patronized farmstands prior to being incarcerated, was
pleased by the positive response from fellow prisoners to his homemade
meals. “Guys will come by and say, ‘Hey, dinner was great!’”
he reported.

Using nutritious, local ingredients in a prison setting to cook food
from scratch is far from the norm. Yet MVRCF is one of a handful of
correctional facilities throughout the country serving fresh food
crafted from area products, reshaping the unhealthy, tasteless, even
toxic
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diet that has historically been served to people in prison.

“Food is so much more than what is on the tray,” said Leslie Soble
of Impact Justice [[link removed]], a
nonprofit prison reform organization which released a groundbreaking
report
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in 2020 on the food served in United States prisons. It starkly
details aspects like maggots found in meat and quotes those formerly
incarcerated: “The food there was designed to slowly break your body
and mind.”

Against the backdrop of George Floyd’s murder
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and the hot topics of public health and food security and access, the
findings brought a newfound awareness to this issue, offering fresh
approaches and fueling conversations and nascent change.

“Obviously there is the nutritional aspect, physical health, mental
health, but also how do people absorb a sense of identity, what’s
being communicated through food?,” said Soble, the report’s lead
author. “Is there a way that food could support re-entry?”

Better food and nutrition hopefully translates into an improved
rehabilitative experience, along with lower health care costs for the
state and taxpayers, said Isaac Dayno, public policy director for
Vermont’s Department of Corrections (DOC). Correctional facilities
“have a moral obligation,” he added, “to support our
{agricultural} communities and to make sure we’re getting folks
healthy, fresh food.”

Over the past decade, amid the recognition that access to healthy food
is a human right, there have been efforts to overhaul institutional
food at hospitals and schools — but not at prisons and jails.
“Correctional facilities,” said Dayno, “have always been a place
where we put people we don’t want to think about, where we kind of
disappear folks who society has deemed are too much trouble to be
dealt with in the public sphere.”

“When you get the fresher stuff, you notice the difference daily on
how your body is feeling.”

Kyle Moore, MVRCF’s food service supervisor, was purchasing local
corn and apples before Vermont’s DOC instituted a strategic plan
prioritizing health and wellness in 2024. Moore said now they’re
considering how the food served affects “the way people perceive
themselves, where they’re better nourished and feeling like they can
then go and do things that they can better accomplish their goals.”

Discovering that Vermont’s procurement contracts allowed some
discretionary purchasing, Moore visited over 50 farms across the
state, developing relationships with producers. His experience
highlights a prominent hurdle: Each state possesses different, often
cumbersome, and poorly understood procurement policies.

California’s application is 32 pages long, said Hope Sippola, farmer
and co-owner of Spork Food Hub in Davis, California, which supplies
food from area farmers to institutions like schools, prisons, and
prison hospitals. Spork is part of “Harvest of the Month” (HOTM),
a pilot program of Impact Justice and the California DOC which
delivers a California-grown product like persimmons and asparagus to
the state’s adult facilities monthly.

“It always aligned with our mission to improve the food in the
places that need it most,” said Sippola. HOTM is part of Impact
Justice’s farm to corrections program, which also holds
trauma-informed nutrition education classes for those formerly
imprisoned. Fresh produce exposes those inside to new foods, tastes,
ideas, and understanding about food, said Heile Gantan-Keo, who
oversees the program. It launched in three sites in July 2023; by
year’s end, all 31 will be participating. Impact Justice’s other
projects include advocacy work and recommending best kitchen
practices.

Because Spork aggregates products from mid-size and smaller farms to
assemble enough to meet an institution’s needs, producers are able
to access markets they might not be able to otherwise. The food hub
model is also key to managing the procurement process, as most farmers
do not have the time nor bandwidth for the intensive application.

Sippola notes the program’s value to farmers, who need high-volume,
consistent year-round sales — particularly over the summer, when
produce is most abundant.

Sippola notes HOTM’s value to farmers, who need high-volume,
consistent year-round sales — particularly over the summer, when
produce is most abundant. Legislation requiring that, by 2026, 60% of
agricultural food products purchased by California government agencies
be produced in-state, offers real opportunity for market expansion.
But winning a contract is lengthy, unwieldy, and unguaranteed;
agencies are required to review at least three bids for any item.

Moreover, correctional facilities’ food budgets often only allot
under three dollars per person per day_ _according to Impact Justice.
California-grown produce costs nearly 20-30 cents more per serving
than distributor offerings from Mexico.

Surprisingly though, purchasing nearby can often be less
expensive, said Mark McBrine. A farm owner and director of farm to
table programs at Maine’s DOC, McBrine pioneered creative, local
purchasing while establishing the same self-described “scratch
cooking, whole foods approach” that he used at home. He believes
that eating convenient, processed foods has wrought a health crisis in
America.

Under McBrine’s ovesight, Mountain View Correctional Facility (MVCF)
uses Maine Grain Alliance’s
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literal “run of the mill” flour. This product results from the two
or three initial runs of the stone mill to fine tune the consistency
of a particular grind, at a considerable discount. Baking a sub roll
in-house costs 5.8 cents, versus 33 cents for one purchased via a
state contract. Instead of paying for convenience, said McBrine,
“We’re able to do this very efficiently and save a tremendous
amount of money. And it’s a lot better product.”

Moore sometimes purchases seconds or an oversupply at lesser cost. His
staff is testing products from Salvation Farms
[[link removed]], an enterprise using
agricultural surplus to build a resilient food system in Vermont.
Salvation is developing a line of minimally processed frozen foods
like cubed winter squash crafted from seconds and gleaned produce that
can be easily incorporated into institutional meal plans.

Moore has also teamed with Farm to Institution New England
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to support a healthy, equitable, local food supply chain. The
organization brings together a diverse network of partners ranging
from producers and processors to colleges and carceral institutions.
It is currently surveying his area expenditures, about $35,000, to
offer suggestions for establishing local procurement at Vermont’s
other correctional facilities.

“The world of people doing this work is still very small and tight
knit, but it has expanded exponentially in the last five years.”

FINE also conducts research, hosts a biennial summit, and facilitates
Zoom calls and communities of practice for the region’s prisons for
networking and idea sharing.

Some takeaways are as simple as working with a facility dietician to
develop purchasing flexibility by adjusting a menu item description
from, say, broccoli salad to seasonal salad. Other, bigger shifts,
like seasonal menu planning, procurement changes, and increased
budgets, will take time, effort, and likely, political will.

Along with the changes to the food served in prisons, facilities in
other states
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like Michigan and Oregon have developed high-quality kitchen and
gardening apprenticeships in which participants receive certifications
and can sometimes be paid. Others, however, have come under fire for
abusive prison labor programs
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MCVF’s program supplies the prison, has a regenerative focus, and is
even the subject of a documentary, Seeds of Change
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Reforming the food served in prisons is an uphill battle — there are
at least 6245 correctional facilities
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in the United States — and the topic is getting another spotlight
with reports of moldy, expired food being served
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is encouraged not just by the outlier efforts taking root, but also
the willingness of policy makers and those working in corrections to
being more open to considering avenues for change. “The world of
people doing this work is still very small and tight knit, but it has
expanded exponentially in the last five years,” she said. “Even if
we’re not seeing a ton of concrete, on-the-ground change, I do feel
there in the past five years has certainly been a shift in the way we
talk about this issue and a shift in who is participating in those
conversations.”

“Before,” said Marshal P., “you were always feeling like you
were missing something, even taking vitamins.” He mentions MVRCF’s
shift from powdered to fresh milk. “When you get the fresher stuff,
you notice the difference daily on how your body is feeling.” He
appreciates the benefits to him, others who are incarcerated, and to
farms, too. Said Marshal, “It feels good all around.”

 

 

 

* prison diet
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* Prisons
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