ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 3, 1997 TAG: 9701030112
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
A Virginia Tech agriculture project may get a little help from the Virginia General Assembly with its effort to help state prison inmates grow their own food.
Del. Jim Shuler, D-Blacksburg, will ask legislators for $250,000 to launch a study of meat and dairy product production by inmates. Shuler says it's part of an effort to develop a plan where inmates can produce all of their food.
Virginia's state prisons house 25,300 inmates. The exact amount spent on food for each is unavailable, although $16,590 was the average annual cost of feeding, housing, and maintaining a prisoner during fiscal year 1996, which ended July 1, said David Botkins, spokesman for the state Department of Corrections.
Shuler's proposal would lead to the second phase of a program started three years ago with the aid of Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Under the first phase, inmates grew "high-value, labor-intensive crops" such as asparagus, strawberries and tomatoes, at a 210-acre Sussex County farm, according to a release from Shuler's office.
Tech professor Paul Hoepner, who leads the project, expects crops will be sold for a $2 million annual profit, according to the release.
The Corrections Department owns 10,000 acres of land, and not all of it is being cultivated.
LENGTH: Short : 35 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1997by CNB