The North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers, Land Loss Prevention Project, was created in 1983 to provide legal expertise, community education, and advocacy skills to help farmers and rural landowners facing legal, economic, and environmental challenges. Savi Horne joined as executive director in 2000. Prior to this, she spent a year in Zimbabwe working with the African American NGO, Africare. Savi has also been engaged at the international level, including presenting, in May 2022, before UN Working Group for People of African Descent in the section on Intergenerational Deprivation and Anti-Black Racism: Asset Building for Economic and Financial Freedom of Children of African Descent. It was during this time that Savi became interested in what it meant to be a smallholder farmer on contested land and the value of coming to land loss work from a union perspective.

As a state, regional, and national non-governmental organization leader, she has been instrumental in addressing the needs and interests of Black, Indigenous, People of Color and limited resource farmers, ranchers and landowners. She is a current member of the Agriculture Subcommittee of the United State Department of Agriculture Equity Commission, charged with making recommendations for systemic equity changes in delivery of programs and services.

Savi completed six years of service on the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. She serves on the boards of the National Family Farm Coalition and the Rural Coalition. Savi is a member of the Coordinating Council of Black Land and Power Coalition and the Leadership Team of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. She also sat on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Equity Commission and Agriculture Subcommittee.

Two of Savi’s recent projects have been funded through the Southern Region of Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE). In 2020, she served as Co-PI on “Navigating Financial and Mental Health Crisis”, an almost $300 million research and education grant. And in 2021, nearly $400 million was granted for, “Securing Land Tenure Rights for Heirs Property Owners”. Savi is a recipient of the 2020 American Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources (SEER) Award for Excellence in Environmental, Energy, and Resources Stewardship. As a state, regional, and national non-governmental organization leader, she is instrumental in addressing the needs of Black, Indigenous, People of Color and limited resource farmers and ranchers.

Savi has been widely honored for her work. In September 2022, she was awarded the Spirit of Farm Aid Award: Lifetime All Access Pass, signed by Willie Nelson, in recognition of her “tireless contribution to Farm Aid’s mission to cultivate a vibrant, family farm-centered system of agriculture in America.” In 2020, she received the American Bar Association, Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources (SEER) Award for Excellence in Environmental, Energy, and Resources Stewardship. You can listen to this podcast of a conversation by Monica White with Savi Horne in Edge Effects (2017): https://edgeeffects.net/savi-horne/. Saiv is a recipient of the James Beard Foundation, Leadership Award, for a just, equitable, sustainable and economically viable food system. In the October/November 2022 issue of Garden and Gun Magazine, she received a Champions of Conservation Award. Several quotes noting her local food system work were attributed to her in Edible North Carolina: A Journey across a State of Flavor, edited by Marcie Cohen Ferris (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, Published 2022).