Winter 2025 Issue

Family Affair

Roslyn Haynie Banks ’08 branches out while tending her agricultural roots

January 30, 2025
By Tina Eshleman

Tribe

Roslyn Haynie Banks ’08, farming is more than an occupation. It’s a legacy.

While studying accounting and finance at William & Mary, spending a semester abroad in Australia and working as a financial analyst and accountant, she has always remained connected to her family’s farmland in Virginia’s Northern Neck, about 80 miles northeast of Williamsburg.

The youngest of five siblings, she is part of the fifth generation of Haynies growing row crops on land purchased by her great-great grandfather, Robert Haynie. Born into slavery in 1823, he saved enough money to buy 60 acres after the Civil War and emancipation. Today, the Haynie farming and forestry operations encompass over 8,000 acres the family owns or leases in Virginia and Arkansas.

The growth is notable as the number of U.S. farms continues a decades-long decline. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), there were 48,697 Black farmers in 2017, down from 925,708 in 1920. Overall, the number of American farms has dropped to about 1.89 million from a high of 6.8 million in 1935.

“Farming is hard work. It requires faith to invest your money in seeds and put them in the ground and wait for them to grow,” Haynie Banks says. “Weather is unpredictable and the effects of climate change — such as drought — have not been kind to farmers.”

She notes that farming also requires significant investment in land and equipment. Prices for commodities such as corn don’t increase the way they do for consumer products like computers or cars. Some families lose farm property when someone dies without a will and the land winds up being sold at auction, she says. Black farmers have faced additional hurdles such as discriminatory lending practices over the years, as acknowledged by the USDA.

Having support from the whole family helps. Although some of the Haynie siblings pursued other careers, such as medicine, all of them assist on the farm and participate in decision making.

“It does take a village,” Haynie Banks says. “We all bring diverse skills to the table. And so I think that has been a key to our success.”

Another key has been multiple streams of income. In Virginia, the Haynies grow corn, wheat, barley, yellow peas, rapeseed, canola and soybeans in four Northern Neck counties. The crops are mostly sold directly or indirectly to companies such as Perdue or Tyson Foods that use it for animal feed. Some of the corn is also used to produce ethanol, a renewable fuel product. In 2010, the Haynie family branched out to Arkansas, where they grow rice and soybeans and operate a rice processing facility.

The family patriarch, Philip J. Haynie II P ’08, is in his 70s and still spends about 80 hours per week doing farm work. Haynie Banks’ brother, Philip J. “P.J.” Haynie III, holds the title of CEO and oversees Haynie Farms’ Arkansas operation. He also advocates for other Black farmers as chairman of the National Black Growers Council.

Haynie Banks divides her time between the farm and her own small business as a financial consultant and tax advisor. About once a week, she travels from her home in James City County to the farm office in Lottsburg, where she works on invoicing, bids, financial statements and project planning. She has grown her tax practice by hiring and training William & Mary business students. She also counsels aspiring farmers and other entrepreneurs as a volunteer with SCORE Williamsburg, part of a national network of expert business mentors.

“I took accounting in high school, and once my dad figured out I was good with numbers, payroll and invoicing, I got assigned to the computer,” she says. “I knew going into William & Mary that my end goal was to be a chief financial officer.”

William & Mary appealed to her because of the strong reputation of its business program. Her experience began with Preparing for Life as a University Student (PLUS), a program that helps high school graduates transition to higher education by providing opportunities to interact with faculty members, current students and other incoming students.

“Our counselors showed us where we needed to go and how to get things done,” she says. “When we came in for freshman orientation, we already had a leg up.”

The PLUS program introduced her to mentors Chon Glover M.Ed. ’99, Ed.D. ’06 and Vernon Hurte in what was then the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs. The program also connected Haynie Banks to a work-study job that she continued all four years with the late Charlotte Davis Brown, longtime director of the McLeod Business Library in the Raymond A. Mason School of Business. That job, combined with working on her family’s farm and receiving several community-based scholarships, helped support Haynie Banks’ education.

Because she could not enter the business school until her third year at William & Mary, Haynie Banks chose to study abroad in Adelaide, Australia, during the spring semester of her second year.

“I had an amazing time being on my own studying international management, business and commerce, and being able to apply some of those concepts back to our family businesses,” she says.

"As I reflect on my childhood experience of being a farmer’s daughter to now raising future farmers, it is definitely a path to entrepreneurship that I could not have achieved without the education and experiences I gained at William & Mary," Haynie Banks adds. "The liberal arts approach to higher education was an added bonus to my degree in finance. The study abroad experience opened my mind to traveling internationally to bring ideas and concepts back to the farm, and to also share our farm with the rest of the world."

A summer internship with Wachovia Securities (now Wells Fargo) before her senior year led to a post-graduation job with the company. While earning her Master of Accounting degree at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Haynie Banks studied abroad in Cape Town, South Africa. Decades later, her family owns part of the only Black-owned rice mill in the United States and has provided rice to Africa as part of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Food for Peace Program.

After five years of working in a corporate structure in Virginia and North Carolina, she decided to branch out on her own. This change coincided with her becoming a military spouse, which involved moves to Texas and Tennessee, and the mother of two daughters.

Haynie Banks obtained enrolled agent status, a credential that allows her to represent taxpayers before the IRS. She is currently working toward becoming a certified public accountant.

“Taxes are something I can do on my own time, no matter where I live,” Haynie Banks says. She named her company Adelaide Rose LLC, a nod to her time studying abroad.

“I was still actively involved in overseeing some things at the farm business,” she adds. “Whenever there was a big decision to make or a contract to review, they’d run it by me.”

**FAMILIAL TIES:** The land farmed by Haynie Banks and her father, Philip J. Haynie II, includes 60 acres purchased by her great-great grandfather after the Civil War. Photo Credit: Alfred Herczeg P ’23

Haynie Banks returned to her home community in Northumberland County in 2019, after her marriage ended, and lived there until she moved to James City County last year. She and her daughters, Suzette and Juliette, have been regular attendees at Macedonia Baptist Church, built by her great-great grandfather nearly 150 years ago. Her father remains involved in the church’s deacon board, and Haynie Banks is a member of the Millennial Advisory Committee for the Northern Neck Baptist Association, which comprises about 30 Black churches in the region.

While speaking about her career at her daughters’ school, Haynie Banks discovered that not one child in the classroom wanted to be an accountant. That inspired her to write “Adelaide the Accountant,” a children’s book that shows the vital role the occupation plays in the life of a community. She followed that book with “Adelaide and Agriculture” to encourage interest in farming-related careers.

Both books include scenes from her alma mater. In one, the main character takes her daughters to the Sunken Garden for a picnic. The other includes a picture of the Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved, unveiled in 2022 during William & Mary’s inaugural Black Alumni Reunion Weekend, which Haynie Banks attended.

Having joined the Nu Chi chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority while at William & Mary, she pledged during the Black Alumni Reunion Weekend to donate to the upcoming National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) Garden project, and she encourages others to do the same. "The NPHC Garden raises the visibility of historically Black fraternities and sororities at William & Mary by celebrating their contributions to our campus community," she says.

Suzette, age 9, and Juliette, 7, have been introduced to the family business on a small scale by growing vegetables and selling them at farmers markets, going for tractor rides and tending to cows, goats and chickens.

“Being able to tie that back to what their grandparents, aunts and uncles do is meaningful to me,” Haynie Banks says. “I love the connection with family, and being able to see the fruits of our labor — watching our crops take root and grow.”