Prisons’ $500,000 cotton crop ruined
Inmate-grown produce on state lands lost to flooding from Harvey
Cotton grown on Texas prison farms worth half a million dollars was one of the quiet casualties of Hurricane Harvey. With it went some 300 acres of unharvested corn and a miscellany of other vegetables, combining for a substantial loss to the farming program that helps Texas Department of Criminal Justice be self-sufficient in its prisoner food and clothing needs.
“As it stands right now, we’ll have to be strategic in how we use our inventory,” said Bobby Lumpkin, director of TDCJ’s agribusiness division.
The floodwaters, which forced evacuations from five prisons along the Brazos River, wreaked havoc on farming operations at TDCJ facilities in Brazoria and Walker counties, officials said. Wind and water destroyed row crops in fields at the Darrington, Scott and Ellis units, as well as at the evacuated Ramey, Terrell and Stringfellow units.
As the Category 4 storm barrelled toward Southeast Texas, the prison system did its best to save the year’s yield.
“We did everything we could to harvest everything we could before the storm set in,” Lumpkin said.
All told, TDCJ lost around 40 percent of its 2017 cotton crop — or 2,700 acres. Typically, the cotton is harvested by prisoners and sent along to prison-run factories where it’s made into clothes for inmates. This year, TDCJ will compensate for the loss by using untouched stores from past years.
“We still had cotton in inventory from last crop season,” Lumpkin said.
In a worst-case scenario, theoretically TDCJ could be forced to buy cotton from elsewhere in order to continue its clothing production operations — but so far that’s never
happened and prison officials don’t anticipate that it will.
It’s likely that the only impact going forward will be a shift in crop plans for next year as the prison system looks to replenish its stores, Lumpkin said.
In some ways, the timing of the storm was lucky — at least in terms of its impact on prison farming operations.
“When we had our Memorial Day floods in May and June, our corn and milo was still in the field and had not been harvested, so that was a substantial impact,” Lumpkin said. “This year being able to get the corn and milo out of the fields lessened the impact overall but because of the cotton season, the timing of the event caused us to take the biggest hit on our cotton crops.”
This year, green beans, carrots and corn had already been harvested — and those foods might just play a bigger role in the inmate diets in the near future. The lost crops — squash, okra, eggplant, peas, and peppers — will be a little more scarce.
“At the end of the day, TDCJ was pretty lucky considering how significant a storm Harvey was and the amount of rainfall that fell,” said spokesman Jason Clark. “At the end of the day we came out OK.”
Jason Clark, TDCJ spokesman “At the end of the day, TDCJ was pretty lucky considering how significant a storm Harvey was and the amount of rainfall that fell. At the end of the day we came out OK.”