Food Bank employees unload potatoes
delivered by Correction Enterprises.

Anne Arella of the Food Bank

"We had an excess of the whole white potatoes inmates grow at the state prison farm so we arranged to provide them to people across the state by donating them to the Food Bank," said Correction Secretary Mack Jarvis. "We’ve put squads of inmates to work across the state helping communities. This food donation is another way inmate labor can be used to help North Carolinians."

Workers unloaded 40,000 pounds of canned potatoes from correction trucks at the Food Bank’s warehouse in Raleigh this morning.

"By New Years, these potatoes will be distributed to homes across eastern North Carolina," said Anne Arella of the Food Bank. "We’re very thankful to the department for their donation."

The Food Bank is a distribution center serving nearly 500 agencies providing food to hungry people in 34 counties of eastern and central North Carolina. Emergency food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, elderly nutrition sites, day care centers and group homes all benefit from the work of the Food Bank.

In recent years, the Department of Correction has donated other food and used the cannery at the state prison farm to process raw sweet potatoes that had been donated to the Food Bank.