The Agribusiness Division operates and manages 145,337 acres located in 46 counties in Texas. Employing over 316 full-time employees and utilizing over 5,800 offenders, the Agribusiness Division has agriculture operations on 50 different prison units. Production is very diversified and ranges from 36 varieties of edible crops to a cow and heifer her in excess of 9,000 head. In addition to production enterprises, the division manages a packing plant, beef processing plant, vegetable canning plant, two feedmills, two cotton gins and an alfalfa dehydrator. A vegetable packing shed is in operation on the Central Unit, near Sugarland, and is capable of handling several million pounds of fresh vegetables per year.
Offenders are an integral part of the labor force and are used in many capacities on the farm level.
Job duties range from clerks in the farm and shop offices to tractor and heavy equipment operators, to line squad members that clean fence rows and drainage ditches and harvest crops. Jobs in various agriculture programs such as the packing plant, beef processing plant, canning plant and feedmills allow the offender to obtain a skill and acquire experience that can eventually be used in the outside world. The Agribusiness Division is in its second year working with Texas Association of Second Harvest Food Banks to utilize offender labor and TDCJ land to grow vegetables to benefit the Food Banks throughout the State to feed needy and homeless people. This year alone, TDCJ plans to grow and harvest approximately 3 million pounds of produce.