‘It’s Heartbreaking When Farming Is a Radical Political Act’: 12 Best Takeaways From Willie Nelson’s 2024 Farm Aid Festival

To truly appreciate the depth of the movement that Farm Aid has supported since 1985, show up early.  One day early. On Friday (Sept. 20), the organization hosted its “Farmer Forum, A Rural Call to Action” over seven hours at the Saratoga Hilton. “This is my favorite day of Farm Aid,” said Carolyn Mugar, the veteran organizer and activist, who has guided the organization since it began. She welcomed hundreds of farmer advocates from scores of organizations and more than 40 states, plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. Streaming on Farm Aid’s YouTube channel, sessions focused on the fight to protect the nation’s food supply from domination by corporate agriculture. “We’re really fighting for representative democracy,” said Tim Gibbons, communications director of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, an advocacy group formed the same year as Farm Aid. Many advocacy groups later participated in Homegrown Village, a mainstay of the festival itself.

At Farm Aid Eve, a pre-festival celebration on Friday (Sept. 20), the Spirit of Farm Aid Award was presented to several longtime supporters, including Anne and Derek Bedarf. “These two energetic, spirited people have led the way in composting in the music business,” said Farm Aid associate director Glenda Yoder. “They showed up at Farm Aid 2008 in Mansfield, Massachusetts, to lead the green team effort. And like so many of you, after that first encounter with Farm Aid, they became entangled in the vortex of this intense and joyful community and dived into an awful lot of hard work.” Yoder added: “Farm Aid was the first major music festival to require compostable packaging, install composing, recycling and landfill containers in plazas, [recruiting] volunteers to help people throw the right thing in the right thing. Thankfully, by 2016 Live Nation began its composting efforts and now it is built in, efficient and successful.” Yoder noted that Anne Bedarf had taught young environmentalists, including Lucy August-Perna, who today is senior director of global sustainability at Live Nation Entertainment.

Following the 2023 Farm Aid festival stage in Noblesville, Indiana, the organization distributed $1,346,015 in grant funding, “prioritizing grant proposals that advanced our 2023 priority issue areas: facilitating farmer-led solutions to climate change — which was the focus of the annual Farm Aid festival, supporting family farmers experiencing crisis and farm stress, advancing racial equity in agriculture, and stopping the growth of industrial and corporate power in agriculture,” says Farm Aid communications director Jennifer Fahy. Among the grant recipients, says Fahy, were “97 organizations working nationally to provide services to farmers in rural and urban communities, bolster connectivity between farmers and consumers, and promote system changes for a better food and farming future.” Oh, and Willie signs all the checks.

Every year, Farm Aid showcases rising artists. That honor this year went to the insightful singer-songwriter Jesse Welles, the fiery Memphis blues and soul band Southern Avenue; the soft-spoken but spectacular Americana star Joy Oladokun; and full-throated Cassandra Lewis. “If you know me, you know how important farming is to me,” Lewis wrote on Instagram after Farm Aid announced she would be on this year’s bill. “I’ve spent years gathering knowledge and cultivating relationships with dozens of farms including cannabis and myco-culture,” wrote the Portland, Oregon, artist. “I began planning and hope to co-create an international co-operative for touring musicians and regenerative farms which will feature a circuit for touring independent musicians from all over the world. It’s always been a goal of mine to link up with Farm Aid and with folks who understand the absolute necessity of creating systems for the independent musicians and farmers of the world to thrive together.”

The afternoon sun began to cut shadows across the amphitheater lawn as Nathaniel Rateliff strutted out along with the Night Sweats for a supercharged soul-stirring, vocal-testifying, horn-fired, stage-stomping session. A Missouri native, Rateliff has described how much Farm Aid’s mission means to him. “Everybody was losing their farm in our region when I was a kid,” he told Billboard backstage at an earlier Farm Aid. “Even up until 1997, I was working in a plastics factory with [Night Sweats bassist] Joseph Pope and there was an old man working with us, who had been a pig farmer. He said, “I’ll butcher and give you a pig for $80.” The factory farms had overproduced so much pork that they’d driven the price down and he lost his farm.” As he performed Saturday, Rateliff wore suspenders over a well-worn red T-shirt bearing the words: “Stop Factory Farms.”

Lukas Nelson’s band Promise of the Real, currently on hiatus, has previously created a sonic storm accompanying Neil Young at Farm Aid. But Nelson, with a startling fresh-shaven new look, has taken a traditional turn lately, performing bluegrass with the Travelin’ McCourys. At the end of his set, he welcomed to the stage bluegrass legend Del McCoury, 85, for a romp through Flatt & Scruggs “Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms.” It wasn’t the only bit of traditionalism from Texas on Saturday as Charley Crockett, beneath his towering white cowboy hat, earlier showcased tracks from his album $10 Cowboy.

If any artist on the Farm Aid bill Saturday could rival Willie Nelson for the title of American icon it was Mavis Staples, who opened her set with “If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me)” then “Just Another Soldier (In the Army of Love).” Earlier in the day, it was noted at the Farm Aid press conference that this year is the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act and the Staples Singers — who recorded “Just Another Soldier” as the B-Side of their classic “I’ll Take You There” — were on the front lines of that struggle. “We bring you greetings from the Windy City — Chicago, Illinois!” declared Staples, who last performed at Farm Aid in her hometown in 2015. “We come this evening to bring you some joy, some happiness, some inspiration and some positive vibrations!” In a politically powerful moment, she sang the Staples Singers’ anthem of the Civil Rights movement “Freedom Highway,” declaring, no, she would not turn around, not go back.

Few artists could follow the energy of Mavis Staples — but Margo Price proved up to the challenge, from the emotional opening of “Hands of Time” to the blues-rock jam that closed her set. Price, who joined the Farm Aid board in 2021, also has a deeply personal connection to the organization. “This is my eighth year at Farm Aid and every year I feel incredibly inspired when I come,” she said at the day’s opening press conference, “not only because I saw first hand how the loss of my family farm affected everyone around me but also because I think farming is a lot like the music business — both of these occupations are really risky. Corporate monopolies are destroying small businesses all over America and every year it becomes hard and harder. We’re facing streaming and monopolies on our ticket sales and it feels very similar.  But every year we come together we come to face these challenges. Where you spend your dollar, that matters a lot. So stop at the local farmers market. And most important — get out and vote.”

As evening fell, Dave Matthews performed a spellbinding set with longtime accompanist Tim Reynolds in acoustic guitar duets. For its conclusion, he welcomed Willie Nelson’s sons, Lukas and Micah, and Nathaniel Rateliff for a rousing cover of “The Weight.” At the press conference earlier, Matthews reacted to young farmers who described their avocations as “radical.” Said Matthews: “It is a little bit heartbreaking — when farming the earth is a radical political act. I mean, that is a society that’s lost its mind. What all these farmers are all talking about is connection, a real connection, to the earth, to our mother — and to truth. And the enemy of that connection is greed. We have the wisdom [to save the earth]. But the thing that stops us is greed. And it’s corporate farms, corporate agriculture.”

Among the Farm Aid headliners, Mellencamp has typically offered the closest to a greatest hits set. And Saturday’s show brought “Paper in Fire,” “Check it Out,” “Small Town” and the inevitable crowd sing-along of “Jack and Diane” — but also the touching timing of “Longest Days.” And Mellencamp sang “Rain on the Scarecrow,” the song which has endured as the heartbreaking anthem of the 1980s farm foreclosure crisis which gave birth to Farm Aid.

Before Neil Young took the stage, the two huge extra speakers housed on either side of the stage gave a clue about what to expect. Young — dressed in a red-and-black-checked lumberman’s shirt and patched jeans — seemed at first in a beautifully mellow, acoustic mood, playing the wonderfully apt “Harvest Moon” from 1992, followed by “Unknown Legend” from the same year. But “Love Earth” and “Heart of Gold” soon gave way to electric ditty of “Homegrown” and the powerhouse jam of “Powderfinger,” featuring a fearsome electric guitar solo from Young. At the press conference earlier in the day, Young was anything but mellow. “We’re fighting for our lives,” he said. “The American farmer is fighting for your life and the life of the earth. And what’s killing the earth is climate [change]. It’s not a natural thing that’s happening.”

“Happy Farm Aid — 39 years!” shouted Willie Nelson, flanked on stage by sons Lukas and Micah. This native of Abbot, Texas, once wrote of his childhood: “My backyard was six miles of beautiful farms and ranches… My playground was miles of hay, corn and cotton fields.”

No other musician has sustained such commitment to a cause and a community as has Nelson with Farm Aid. His set included now-expected classics, “Whiskey River,” “Bloody Mary Morning,” “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” “On the Road Again,” “Always on My Mind” and more (marred only by a few minutes of lost sound from the stage). Nelson’s voice sounded as strong as ever; his solos on his trusty battered acoustic guitar, Trigger, were simply amazing. 

But then came something unexpected.  While Nelson has remained remarkably prolific as a recording artist, within memory, he has never added a newly recorded song to his set at Farm Aid. On Saturday, the 91-year-old brought tears to the eyes of fans with his new single, a cover of “Last Leaf,” written by Tom Waits.

“I’m the last leaf on the tree

The autumn took the rest

But they won’t take me

“I’ll be here through eternity

If you wanna know how long

If they cut down this tree

I’ll show up in a song”

But Nelson quickly lifted the mood as the evening came to a close with Farm Aid artists filling the stage for the traditional finale of “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” and “I’ll Fly Away,” followed by “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” and the delightfully self-deprecating romp, “It’s Hard to be Humble.” For one more year, farmers and fans gave thanks for the inspiring gift that is Farm Aid and Willie Nelson.