SAAFON'S
MISSION, VALUES & CORE APPROACH 

In our 20th anniversary year we are centering Black farmers and communities they have invested in for the continuity of Southern Black agrarian futures. To learn more about our twenty year growth trajectory since the first seeds sown by co-founders Cynthia Hayes and Owusu Bandele, read Farmers are the Fabric: Celebrating Twenty Years of Weaving Black Agrarian Connections.

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SAAFON Mission, Core Values, Approach, and Code of Conduct

MISSION 

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SAAFON’s mission is to elevate the collective power, prosperity, and visibility of Black farmers committed to practicing and advancing ecologically sustainable practices. We do this by cultivating liberatory approaches to land stewardship and agriculture in the Southeastern United States, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Caribbean region, and promoting the links between Black farming, Black history, and Black culture.

CORE VALUES

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Farmer–centered and Farmer-Led. We see Black farmers as the center of our work and the foundation upon which a Black land or food justice movement must be built. We see the farmer, and their inherent value, as the cornerstone of the agrarian community. We listen deeply to farmer needs, seek farmer leadership, and prioritize farmer voices.

Innovation Rooted In Legacy. We value the renewal and reactivation of ancestral practices, and believe in the return to our survival strategies as a way forward. We lead with legacy and value solutions that are in dialogue with the past. We honor the practice of storytelling, which has been and will continue to be used as a map for remembering ourselves.

Connectivity & Magnified Collectivism. We cannot afford to not be in right relationship to each other. We build collective power by cultivating intentional relationships at every stage and space in our communities through our organizing and movement building. We value interdependence, and building connections that weave us together in sustainable ways.

Walking toward a vision. We are solution driven – we value tangible and demonstrated success. We see where our farmers want to be, and we will focus on going and getting there. We value solutions informed by past practices in order to learn from the legacy of the work. We believe in bringing things into reality through meaningful impact.

Wholeness. We honor complete personhood, and seek non-transactional relationships with farmers and in our landscape to push back on a system that is predicated on exploitation and extraction, which is not about and for people. We believe that the farmer is more than their farm, and value everyone showing up as their full selves, supporting authentic humanity and cultivating relationships that honor this wholeness.

Uplifting Voices From the Margins. We value intention in decision-making and resourcing those in the margins – elders, young, women, disabled, and queer farmers. We believe in telling their stories in their voices, creating narratives that visualize and uplift their work, needs, and visions for themselves and their communities.

Bigger Than Us. We recognize the work that we engage in is not just about this particular place and time. It is overlapping, connecting to the ancient agrarian past, and rippling forward across generations. We are building on our ancestral ecological and cultural knowledge, and root ourselves in the agrarian tradition, so that we can continue the thread forward, and contribute to the legacy.

Our Approach. The core of SAAFON’s work is to weave connections, support farm viability, and promote Black agrarian lifeways and culture.

Code of Conduct. SAAFON is committed to providing a harassment-free space for all farmers, staff members, partners and collaborators, volunteers, and program participants regardless of gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, physical ability, appearance, race, ethnicity, age, religion, class, or identity. We expect participants to treat each other with respect in all interactions.