Our Mission
Southside Community Farm (SCF) is a Black-led urban farm and food hub in a historically segregated Black neighborhood. Our mission is not only to feed people, but to co-create a web of food sovereignty in which community members have tangible power over their local food system. This mission includes creating and supporting avenues of education, climate resilience, food access, seed sovereignty, small scale economic viability, joy, rest, healing, and more. We prioritize the needs of Black people and other community members of color while celebrating diverse cultural foodways and stewarding culturally significant food and medicine plants.
…and what it means to us
Land has long acted as the “scene of the crime” (Leah Penniman, Farming While Black) for people of color in the U.S. and in the Asheville area, from the violent history of enslavement and sharecropping, to the forced removal and genocide of Indigenous peoples, to the victimization and exploitation of predominantly Latine/Abya Yala Indigenous farm workers. Some Southside community members have been displaced from land in their lifetimes through redlining, urban renewal, and gentrification. SCF aims to support people of color in their journey of healing and reconnecting with land and food in ways that feel generative, consensual, and joyous. Liberation can only occur when BIPOC and low wealth communities control our own destinies.
As part of a neighborhood struggling under food apartheid, we focus not only on welcoming our community into the farm space but on “bringing the garden out of the garden”, in the words of one of our co-founders. Thus, we work to interconnect the farm with our community and to bring food justice out of the farm space and directly to the people. To build food justice, we strive for true accessibility through a variety of programs. We deliver produce to neighbors’ homes, stock three free food fridges and four pantries with fresh produce, lead agricultural and environmental justice programs for youth, host community dinners and gatherings, organize BIPOC garden days for people of color to enjoy the outdoors together, teach herbal medicine making with workshops and free distribution, and support a variety of food donation programs partnering with organizations such as Bounty & Soul and Manna Foodbank. SCF focuses land stewardship as a way to create a resilient future together.
