Picture your favorite type of fruit. Maybe it’s a juicy strawberry, a tart grapefruit, or a sweet nectarine.
Now, imagine not being able to eat that fruit for the next twenty years.
Since 2022, I’ve visited more than 35 prisons across the country to talk to incarcerated people about food. Here’s what we know: in nearly every state, incarcerated people are forced to survive on food that, for decades, the rest of us have been told to avoid for health reasons. Prison diets are carb-heavy, ultraprocessed, and high in sodium and sugar. Nationwide, more than half of the people our organization has surveyed report “rarely or never” having access to fresh fruits and vegetables while behind bars.
Last month, we brought together farmers, legislative staff, funders, advocates, and representatives from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation at Solano State Prison to talk about food access in prison and explore the impacts of our Harvest of the Month program, which enlists small farms and food hubs to bring fresh, locally-grown produce directly into correctional institutions.
What we actually saw was the enormous power of food to both harm and heal, as well as the incredible potential of programs that leverage creative, cross-sector partnerships to change thousands of lives for the better.
What we actually saw was the enormous power of food to both harm and heal.
Harvest of the Month began in 2023 as a unique collaboration between Impact Justice and the Nutrition Policy Institute — partly in response to a groundbreaking Impact Justice report (now a James Beard Award winning book) on the poor quality of prison food nationwide. Since then, we’ve delivered more than two million pounds of fresh, California-grown produce to over 90,000 incarcerated people. With support from over 30 small and mid-sized farms, we’ve reached every single prison in the state with everything from bok choy to pluots — going above and beyond what California’s current mandate for prison menus requires.
When I ask incarcerated people about Harvest of the Month, I hear stories that capture the fundamental power of food in our lives. Many tell me about sharing produce with each other as a means of building community. Others talk about how hard it is to eat healthy without sufficient information or resources. Overwhelmingly, they emphasize how a single piece of fruit or a new type of vegetable can offer people hope and rehabilitation in a place devoid of healthy food options.
But Harvest of the Month doesn’t just benefit incarcerated people. By aggregating produce through a food hub, the program also makes small and midsize farms viable partners for large institutions. For these farms, the program is an economic game changer. Growers who couldn’t otherwise meet the volume requirements of a large state system can now access these markets, which allows them to increase stable revenue and better support their workforce — including, according to one farmer we spoke with, providing healthcare coverage. It’s an important reminder that even our most overlooked food systems can create wide-ranging impacts and unexpected opportunities.
There’s one moment from our recent trip that I keep coming back to. I was talking with a group of incarcerated people — a group that started as two and quickly grew to twenty — about the produce they’d received. I mentioned the mandarins we’d recently distributed, and the guys lit up. They told me the mandarins had been the best. Sweet. Fresh. Many of them hadn’t had citrus in years.
Then I told them that the woman who grew those mandarins was standing right behind them. They turned around and saw Sarah, a farmer from Twin Tree Farms, with a huge smile on her face and tears welling in her eyes.
This is the true power of Harvest of the Month — a new food system that makes all of us stronger.
At a fundamental level, food is one of the most basic ways we connect — both to our own humanity, and the humanity of others. This is the true power of Harvest of the Month — a new food system that makes all of us stronger.
Our goal is simple: expand access to healthy food in prisons. Harvest of the Month shows exactly what a good idea can grow into.
