The song commemorates the final failure of the sugar crop in 1928 as the result of disease and the imposition of a large federal protective tax on cane sugar, effectively ending cane sugar production in the Brazos River- Sugarland area. The period 1923-1928 was one of very limited cane sugar production; the sugar was processed almost entirely as molasses. Sorghum and sugar beets were grown after that but Imperial Sugar built up its farms again after WW2 to produce cane sugar. See Handbook of Texas articles on Sugarland, Sugar production, etc.
Women prisoners at the Goree farm also worked in the cane fields for a time, not sure of dates, but in the 1920s.
"By 1911, officials had placed women prisoners on the 1000 acre Goree Farm, neat Huntsville. After the conclusion of the convict lease system, the state continued to expand prison farmlands... by 1921 state prison farms encompassed more than 81,000 acres..." Products were "sugarcane, cotton, corn, feed crops and vegetables."
See Handbook of Texas articles on Prison System, Goree farm, Sugar production, Sugarland, etc.

The Handbook of Texas has the details, but scattered in several articles.

Texas rivers are subject to periodic flooding. The worst flood on the Trinity River was in 1908. The Sabine, they say, floods like clockwork every five years (not true, but the interval is roughly that).

The Brazos has been dammed for flood control at several points, it empties in the Freetown-Galveston area.
In the period 1913-1928 levees and drainage systems were built along the Brazos to protect Sugarland and Imperial Sugar property.
I have not found any information about state farm prisoners being used in Brazos levee work, but is was likely, or to shore up levees in flood times when all able-bodied people helped to protect towns along the water courses. I doubt that Goree Farm female prisoners were used in the levee-drainage construction.