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Officials push for W.Va. markets for W.Va. crops

 

Register-Herald photo by Chris Jackson These are some of the potatoes stored in a repurposed root cellar on the ground of Huttonsville Correctional Center. USDA figures show West Virginians spent more than $7.3 billion on food last year, but the state produced less than $800 million worth of foodstuffs. “We’re realists; we know we’re not going to grow all the food we consume,” Helmick said. “But we would like to see what food we do produce to grow substantially.”
Register-Herald photo by Chris Jackson
These are some of the potatoes stored in a repurposed root cellar on the ground of Huttonsville Correctional Center. USDA figures show West Virginians spent more than $7.3 billion on food last year, but the state produced less than $800 million worth of foodstuffs. “We’re realists; we know we’re not going to grow all the food we consume,” Helmick said. “But we would like to see what food we do produce to grow substantially.”

HUTTONSVILLE — On a recent Friday, bitter winds swept across the fallow fields here as prisoners in bright orange jumpsuits unloaded 50-pound bags of West Virginia-grown potatoes from a flatbed truck.

The men in orange from the Huttonsville Correctional Center are part of a program that allows convicts to work outside the prison walls, provide lunches for school children and save the state money in the process.

“We are not reinventing the wheel, we’re just revisiting the old wheel,” Commissioner of Agriculture Walt Helmick said of the program.

West Virginia spends more than $100 million annually on school lunch programs, but produces less than $1 million of what our school children consume, the department’s statistics show.

USDA figures show West Virginians spent more than $7.3 billion on food last year, but the state produced less than $800 million worth of foodstuffs. “We’re realists; we know we’re not going to grow all the food we consume,” Helmick said. “But we would like to see what food we do produce to grow substantially.”

The program’s aim is to provide benefits to all involved, Helmick said, schools, students, prisoners and the state.

“We want West Virginia school children to eat food grown in West Virginia, harvested by West Virginians, grown on West Virginia ground,” he said.

The state is growing green beans, peppers, Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes and more on a couple of farms located near correctional facilities…

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