A Central California sheriff’s office is providing a valuable service to inmates while saving county taxpayers millions each year.

Nestled in the heart of the Golden State is Tulare County, a leader in agriculture and a pioneer in jail reform with the creation of a county-owned farm providing meals to inmates housed at the Tulare County Jail for the last three decades.

“The central San Joaquin Valley is known for its agricultural produce and the ability to grow just about anything here,” Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told Fox News Digital. “One of the things that we wanted to do starting a few years back is offset the cost of what it means to feed inmates each and every day.” 

Boudreaux said that on the high end there can be up to 2,200 inmates at the jail who are fed three times a day, so years ago, the county began using inmates to farm their own food that they are served daily. 

The Tulare County Sheriff’s Farm feeds inmates, saving $1 million a year. (Tulare County Sheriff’s Office)

“I’m fiscally responsible for the money that comes in here. And we save anywhere between $1.2 and $1.6 million to the taxpayer each year.”

The farm not only saves millions in tax dollars, it also gives inmates the opportunity to turn their lives around and be better equipped after their release, the sheriff said. 

“One of the focuses is that we identify those inmates that would be eligible for rehabilitation and work programs, and we place them into our farming operation where they learn animal care, they learn harvesting, they learn food-to-table from farm-to-table type operations. We grow broccoli, we grow cabbage, and they actually harvest this stuff,” Boudreaux said.

He added that they even provide a certification program in which inmates are able to go in and learn how to be certified butchers.

“We have USDA-certified staff that teach and certify inmates so that when they go back out into the field, they can go into the workforce as butchers. They can go into grocery stores, who are always looking for butchers,” he said.

“And with the central San Joaquin Valley being a large agricultural-producing environment, what better way than to train these inmates to actually hop into the workforce on day 1 of release, being ready to understand the farming operation or the animal care operation or a butchering service.”

Boudreaux said their hope in providing these resources is that the inmates won’t return.

“We’d like to reduce our recidivism, and this is one of the ways in which we can really work to make that happen.”