A coalition of farm, religious and social groups have started a national campaign to prevent the closure of Canada's prison farm program.

They met with federal Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan on Monday to try to get him to change his mind about shutting down the farms.

There are six prison farms across the country — two in Ontario, near Kingston, and one in New Brunswick, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

The program was started in the late 1800s to give prisoners a chance to work on farms connected to penitentiaries. They learn everything from welding to working with dairy and beef cattle and poultry. The food produced on the farms is put back into the prison system and sold in local communities.

The government estimates that the prison farm system is losing $4 million a year. Van Loan says the inmates aren't learning valuable modern skills since most will go back into urban settings once they are released from prison.

But the Diane Dowling, the vice-president of the National Farmers Union in Ontario, says scrapping the program doesn't make sense: "It's a bad idea, wrong headed and short-sighted."

Other coalition members argue the prison farm system is a valuable way to rehabilitate inmates.

"The effects on the prisoners of learning these skills are very important. I mean, it is rehabilitation that we are about, isn't it?" asked Cathleen Kneen from Food Secure Canada. "We do call it Corrections Canada not Punishment Canada, right?"

The groups want the federal minister to tour the penitentiary farm near Kingston and are asking for a financial accounting of how the prisons are losing money.

The prison farms are slated to start closing in the next two years.

— Margo McDiarmid