Land & Labor Acknowledgment

We honor this land that sustains us. The stone points we find in freshly tilled fields remind us of those who lived with, cared for, and were fed by this land for thousands of years before us. We are here uninvited, part of a story that began long before we arrived.

This is the ancestral land of the Monacan Indian Nation, whose people continue to live in and steward this region. We remember the Manahoac people, who came here seasonally to hunt, and whose tribal continuity was broken by settler colonial genocide.

We acknowledge that Virginia’s pre-emancipation economy flourished on stolen land. The wealth and productivity of Virginia agriculture were built on the dispossession of Black and Indigenous people. We honor the lives of kidnapped Africans and their descendants, both enslaved and free, who worked the farms and plantations in and around Centreville, including the property that this land was once part of. We recognize the labor they were forced to perform under coercion and exploitation, and we celebrate the cultural knowledge, agricultural skills, and community life they sustained and carried forward.

Cox Farms participates in an economy that continues to benefit from these historical inequities. We hold ourselves responsible for understanding how these histories shape the present, and we work to center racial and economic justice in our work and in our stewardship of the land. As business owners and landowners, we commit to reciprocity: 10% of Cox Farms’ annual profits are allocated to economic, environmental, and social justice initiatives, and we maintain a standing commitment of financial support to the Monacan Indian Nation.

This acknowledgment is offered with humility: it is incomplete and insufficient. As a family, we commit to ongoing learning and action toward more just relationships with land, labor, and community.

–The Cox-Richard Family

Cox Farms, Centreville, Virginia
Revised 2026