The Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network (SAAFON) emerged in the summer of 2006 following a series of conversations between the late Cynthia Hayes and Dr. Owusu Bandele. Mrs. Hayes attended a workshop with the Future Agricultural and Food Systems (IFAFS) project based on her work with African-American farmers in McIntosh County, Georgia, and Dr. Bandele attended as an organic farmer in Louisiana and through his work with the Southern University Agriculture Center. The IFAFS project included a component with a training program leading to organic certification for farmers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and Florida starting between 2006 and 2011. The organic certification trainings and workshops Cynthia and Dr. Bandele would later conduct together resulted in more than 40 farmers obtaining organic certification, most of whom were African American. Together, Ma Cynthia and Baba Owusu joined forces to create SAAFON, the first network of Black organic farmers in the U.S.

With a farmer-centered, farmer-led approach rooted in our commitment to agro-ecological practice, our goal from the beginning has always been to raise the visibility of our farmers’ practices. In 2007, SAAFON obtained scholarships for our early members to attend the annual Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (Southern SAWG) for additional training in organic farming practices and production.

After attending our first SSAWG Conference in 2007, Southern SAWG became a meeting ground for SAAFON members and other Black farmers. In lieu of having our own conference, SAAFON and Cynthia Hayes carved out space during these gatherings to bring farmers together. During the Southern SAWG meeting in 2008, our members led a collective, powerful presentation about organic practices. These members included Beverly Collins-Hall, Robbie Graham, Helen Fields, and Sandra Simone. As part of our work, we continue to support and empower opportunities for our members to showcase their farming knowledge, cultural wisdom, and land-based strategies that are rooted in ancestral ways of knowing that span geographies, space and time.

Forsyth Farmers Market was founded in 2009 by a small group including SAAFON’s very own Ms. Robbie, Mr. Riley, Cynthia and Mr. Hayes. Cynthia spearheaded the development of the market which was located in Forsyth Park, one of two central parks in Savannah, Georgia. Cynthia had a grand idea to run a farmers market in the center of the city focused on organic farming. The Park would not allow for recurring events, but the goal of the market was to establish an ongoing market that took place weekly. Cynthia befriended the Mayor and City Manager, and over a period of time, she got support from the City and they changed city ordinances allowing for recurring events in the Park. The Forsyth Farmers Market brought SAAFON members Joseph Fields, Robbie Graham, as well as members from the So Green Network. The market has been running ever since and continues today.

In 2011, SAAFON members Sandra Simone and Robbie Graham participated in consultant work with member and SAAFON Board Chair Yvette Browne and the organic cooperative in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. SAAFON’s members expand across the Southeastern U.S., and beyond the U.S. mainland to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Core to SAAFON’s work is to hold and create space for our members to connect with like-minded farmers, to build collective power in order to achieve our visions of land-based success, and to model alternative ways of living in the 21st century. The SAAFON team and farmer members traveled to Turin, Italy in June 2012 for Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre 2012. Terre Madre is a worldwide Slow Food festival bringing food communities from around the world together, and that unites small-scale farmers and artisans who follow the principles of good, clean and fair.

SAAFON partnered with Allison and Alphonso Cross, the owners of Boxcar Grocer in Atlanta to host Farm Connect – BoxCar Grocer in April 2014. Allison and Alphonso helped coordinate folks attending the connect in Atlanta, along with Cynthia and SAAFON legacy member Matthew Raiford. The goal of the gathering was to bring local food distributors and organic farmers together to assess the needs of food distributors so farmers could plan their growing seasons based on those needs. This was largely an opportunity for organic farmers and distributors to share learnings and needs so they could better understand how to work together more efficiently.

Blain Snipstal and Dr. Shakara Tyler organized a delegation of SAAFON staff and members to Cuba in 2015. This followed conversations between Blain, Dr. Monica White, Dr. Bandele, Ma Cynthia, Dr. Tyler and others around a need to organize Black agrarianism that speaks to the Black agricultural legacy in the U.S., and a vision nationally for Black people to reconnect with nature and agriculture. The group referred to this as “Afroecology”. Through Blain’s connection with the Association of Smallholder Farms and Farmers in Cuba, Blain, Dr. Tyler, Cynthia Hayes and Ms. Yvette put together a framework to get funding to send SAAFON and its members to this organization’s biannual conference on agroecology for small-scale family farms. For a series of 2 to 3 weeks, about 10-12 SAAFON members traveled to Cuba to attend the conference. This became a defining moment for SAAFON to set itself up to be a player within the context of agroecology in the U.S., and particularly in the South.

Following 10 years of dedicated work, SAAFON continued to grow and deepen our organizing, and commitment to the prosperity of our members. This year was also marked with deep sadness, as we entered a new chapter for SAAFON. Our co-founder, Ma Cynthia Hayes, passed away suddenly in 2016 after leading a process of setting a new direction for SAAFON, including her last major project, the funders tour of 2016. SAAFON brought on new leadership to guide the organization through the painful absence of Cynthia, who is much loved and missed. Her vision, spirit, and legacy will always be with us.

In 2017, SAAFON participated in the Afro-Ecology Exchange at Earth Seed Land Collective in North Carolina hosted by Black Dirt Farm Collective. This became a capstone moment for SAAFON leaning deeper into agroecology work, and presented a significant experience for all those who were present including SAAFON organizers and current and previous staff—including Blain Snipstal and Dr. Shakara Tyler (both members of Black Dirt Farm Collective) who truly led this work—and members Sandra Simone and Janie Dickson. In this same year, following the transition of Cynthia, the board appointed Tamara Jones as Executive Director of SAAFON. Under Tamara’s leadership, SAAFON hired our first full-time employees, expanded and secured a committed funder base, continued to develop SAAFON’s politic, and build its profile. We also continued to deepen and expand our work with members, holding a meeting in Mississippi with SAAFON staff and members.

In 2018, SAAFON focused on reconnecting and cultivating relationships with legacy members of the network, while simultaneously working to reimagine how SAAFON as an institution could deepen its support of ecologically-sustainable farmers in the Southeast and the U.S. Virgin Islands. SAAFON anchored its work in four states during this time, including Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Mississippi. In those four states, we focused on membership development of our network and relationship building with new and long-time members.

This year marked a significant transition in SAAFON’s new era—SAAFON appointed a new Board of Directors, and began to conceptualize a new body of programs and projects that focused on our directing resources to our network, cultivating connections, and our long-term investment in agro/afroecology. Additionally, we prioritized our commitment to uplifting our farmers’ voices by embarking on a storytelling project, With These Hands, to highlight six of our members.

2020 represented a new season for SAAFON. SAAFON brought on Dr. M. Jahi Chappell as Executive Director, who with the staff and board began mapping out SAAFON’s new chapter, future projects and initiatives. We also hosted the Mississippi Agroecology Exchange at the Buie Family Land Trust with the goal to build intergenerational relationships and network, discuss and share Black agrarian technical and cultural practices, and establish connection to our work within the lens of a larger global movement. In early March of 2020, our family of farmers from all across the beloved land of Mississippi came together at Ole Brook Organic Farm, in Brookhaven, Mississippi for the first of a series of state-based gatherings intended to share knowledge, relationship build and practice the Southern Agrarian way. We are in deep appreciation of siblings Sylvia, Wilda and SAAFON farmer and board member Jesse Buie for opening their home, their land and sharing their parent’ s vision for the family actualized and thriving to serve as a reminder of the wealth and quality of life that the land can provide us. Over three days of flexible intergenerational learning, we weaved a quilt that has been in the making for generations and years before. The techniques, practices and history we shared was as rich as the soil we steward.

In 2021, we celebrated a beautiful 15 years of supporting, loving and rallying around Black farmers under the legacy of what was started by Cynthia Hayes and Dr. Bandele. This marked a significant milestone – we deepened and broadened our work to include and celebrate a new generation of Black farmers returning to the land, while remaining in deep relationship with our legacy and elder farmers who root us in our origins. It is our belief that the connection and engaging of our young and elder farmers, this intergenerational exchange, is what grounds us as an organization. As we continue to look ahead, SAAFON has remained committed to the continued preservation and revitalization of Black agrarianism.

SAAFON navigated a stabilization period, ripe with opportunities to deepen between the years of 2021 to 2023, as the institution shifted leadership, grew our staff, and increased the scope of our regional organizing. In 2024, we have embraced the time to focus on critical aspects of organizational work that have been critical to building our internal infrastructure in the key areas of institutional development including: programmatic refinement, board development, operations projects, and incorporation. As a group we have worked to honor the collective intelligence and wisdom in our intergenerational bridge building, tending to the continuity of the future of our network – always deepening our relationships and commitments to each other.