Farm Aid
One early autumn day, nearly four decades ago, at a stadium concert in the heartland of America, Willie Nelson made a pledge to help embattled family farmers who grow the nation’s food.
On Saturday (Sept. 21), Nelson and friends renewed that promise as the annual Farm Aid festival — the longest-running concert for a cause — drew some 21,000 fans to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York, for a day of celebration, activism and song.
Nelson was joined by his fellow Farm Aid board members — Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews and Margo Price — on a bill with Mavis Staples, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Lukas Nelson with the Travelin’ McCourys, Charley Crockett, Joy Oladokun, Southern Avenue, Cassandra Lewis, Jesse Welles and others.
The first Farm Aid concert — inspired by an impromptu call for support for America’s farmers from Bob Dylan during the Live Aid mega benefit in 1985 — was, improbably, staged weeks later that same year, on Sept. 22 in Champaign, Illinois.
Since then, Farm Aid has raised nearly $80 million to promote a strong and resilient family farm system of agriculture, while also building connections in the battles against climate change and social injustice.
New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul gave welcoming remarks before two indigenous acts — the ensemble known as Kontiwennenhá:W, from the Akwesasne community of northern New York, and the Wisdom Indian Dancers, who have performed at every Farm Aid since 1990 — began the joyous hours of music.
This was the third time Farm Aid has been staged in New York State, following a 2007 event at Randall’s Island in New York City, and a previous 2013 festival in Saratoga (during which surprise guest Pete Seeger gave his last major performance). Between 2017 and 2022, New York State lost 3,000 of 33,000 farms, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture Census, as farms across the nation suffer from rising production and labor costs, consolidation and climate change.
Here are the 12 best takeaways from the 39th annual Farm Aid.
Activists Show Up Early and Dig Deep
Farm Aid is returning to New York this year, and will be held Sept. 21 at Broadview Stage at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York.
This year’s lineup features performances from Farm Aid board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews (with Tim Reynolds). Also on the bill are Mavis Staples, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Lukas Nelson with the Travelin’ McCourys, Charley Crockett, Joy Oladokun, Southern Avenue, Cassandra Lewis and Jesse Welles. Additional artists are yet to be announced.
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This marks the third time Farm Aid has been held in New York (and the second time in Saratoga Springs). In 2007, Farm Aid was held at Randall’s Island, New York, followed by Saratoga Springs in 2013. Farm Aid will feature not only music, but also homegrown food and agrarian experiences.
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“We’re energized to be back in New York, said Farm Aid president and founder Nelson in a statement. “The farmers here have always found ways to innovate and contribute to their communities, even as they deal with uncertainties, extreme weather and policies that favor corporations over people. Farmers need us to stand with them as they work to grow our future.”
Over more than 35 years, Farm Aid has raised nearly $80 million to aid programs that help farmers survive and thrive. Farm Aid also promotes the acceleration of the Good Food Movement and family farms as well as works to shift the dominant system of industrial agriculture. Nelson, Young and Mellencamp organized the inaugural Farm Aid concert in 1985 to raise awareness and funds to combat the loss of family farms. Matthews joined the Farm Aid board of directors in 2001, while Margo Price joined the board in 2021.
A release for the 2024 Farm Aid noted that according to the 2022 U.S. Department of Agriculture Census, New York state lost 3,000 of its 33,000 farms between 2017 and 2022, as farms across the U.S. decline due to rising production and labor costs, consolidation and abnormal weather patterns. New York State has nearly 3,600 dairy farms that produce 15.7 billion pounds of milk annually, making New York the country’s fifth largest dairy state.
Tickets for Farm Aid 2024 will go on sale Friday, July 26, at 10 a.m. ET at livenation.com.
“Farm Aid is Earth Aid,” declared Neil Young, succinctly summarizing the role which the festival has taken on since 1985, focusing on how family farmers can help address the climate crisis, while also offering hours of extraordinary music Saturday (Sept. 23) at Ruoff Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana. With an acoustic set which opened with […]
Bob Dylan astonished thousands of fans at Willie Nelson’s sold-out Farm Aid festival with a surprise late-night performance Saturday (Sept. 23) at the Ruoff Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana.
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The appearance took place 38 years after Dylan conceived the idea for what became Farm Aid.
On July 13, 1985, in Philadelphia, Dylan had taken the stadium stage of Live Aid, the mega-benefit organized to raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief. Between songs, he mused to the event’s global audience: couldn’t a similar benefit help America’s family farmers?
“The question hit me like a ton of bricks,” Nelson recalled to Billboard in 2015. The musician was on the road that day, watching Live Aid on his tour-bus TV, and began looking into the economic crisis that was then forcing family farmers off their land and into bankruptcy. Then he called his friends, including the musician who made the suggestion.
Dylan was among the remarkable lineup of country and rock musicians who played the first Farm Aid in Champaign, Ill., on Sept. 22, 1985, a bill which also included Nelson’s fellow Farm Aid founders Neil Young and John Mellencamp, along with Johnny Cash, John Fogerty, Don Henley, Billy Joel, Loretta Lynn, Roy Orbison, Bonnie Raitt and many more — including Tom Petty, who died in 2017, and Petty’s band, the Heartbreakers.
Three decades on, Farm Aid remains music’s longest-running concert for a cause, having raised more than $64 million to support family farmers and a sustainable food system.
Farm Aid’s guiding board now includes Dave Matthews and Margo Price, and Saturday’s bill also featured the Grateful Dead’s Bobby Weir & the Wolf Bros. featuring the Wolfpack, Lukas Nelson, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Allison Russell, The String Cheese Incident and Particle Kid. Also on the bill: Clayton Anderson, The Black Opry featuring Lori Rayne, Tylar Bryant and Kyshona, the Jim Irsay Band, featuring Ann Wilson of Heart, Native Pride Productions and the Wisdom Indian Dancers.
At Farm Aid in 1985, Dylan performed with Petty and the Heartbreakers.
“At that time, Tony Dimitriades, Tom’s manager, was in a business partnership with [the late] Elliot Roberts in Lookout Management” who represented Dylan, recalled Bill DeYoung, a music critic, author and Petty historian, in a 2017 interview with Billboard. DeYoung for many years worked at the Gainesville Sun, the newspaper in Petty’s Florida hometown.
“Dylan needed a band for the first Farm Aid,” said DeYoung. “Everything else sprang from that.”
“Everything else” included the True Confessions Tour that Dylan and Petty launched together early the following year, in February 1986, during which the Heartbreakers backed Dylan for some 60 shows in Australia, Japan and the United States — including two nights at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. and three nights at Madison Square Garden.
The singers also performed at the second Farm Aid on July 4, 1986 — via satellite from their tour stop at Rich Stadium, outside Buffalo, New York. A second outing, the Temples in Flames tour, followed in 1987.
And the creative friendship between Dylan and Petty — born at Farm Aid — flourished.
In 1988, Dylan welcomed Petty, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison to his studio in Malibu to record the song “Handle Me With Care.” Originally intended as the B-side to a single from Harrison’s Cloud Nine album, the song instead became the inspiration for the tongue-in-cheek supergroup The Traveling Wilburys.
So, from Farm Aid, Dylan found a potent touring partner and a hit recording collaboration. On Saturday, the legendary singer contributed to the goal of helping America’s family farmers, which he had first suggested on stage 38 years ago.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
The co-founders of Farm Aid are bringing the annual benefit for the country’s family farms back to the midwest this fall. Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson announced on Monday that the 2023 Farm Aid will return to the Indianapolis, IN area on Sept. 23 for the third time in the event’s 38-year history.
The show at Ruoff Music Center in Noblesville will mark Young’s first in-person attendance since 2019 after the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer took several years off from appearing live due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the principles, other performers this year include: Farm Aid board member Margo Price, fellow board member Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds, the Grateful Dead’s Bobby Weir & the Wolf Bros. featuring the Wolfpack, Lukas Nelson, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Allison Russell, The String Cheese Incident, Particle Kid and more acts to be announced later.
Young did not attend in in 2021 or 2022 due to the pandemic; the 2020 event was presented online.
“We are honored and excited to bring the Farm Aid experience back to Indiana,” said Seymour, IN native Mellencamp in a statement about the first Farm Aid in the state in more than 20 years. “My home state holds deep meaning for me and for the generations of family farmers who have dedicated their lives to caring for the Earth and bringing us good food.”
Since launching in 1985, Farm Aid has raised more than $64 million to support programs that help family farmers.
Farm Aid first IV took place in 1990 at Indianapolis’ Hoosier Dome, with Elton John, Iggy Pop, Bonnie Raitt and Guns N’ Roses joining the three principles and returned in 2001 — shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks — with a lineup featuring then-new board member Matthews, as well as Martina McBride, the Doobie Brothers, Susan Tedeschi, Arlo Guthrie and more. Last years’ event in Raleigh, N.C. featured Chris Stapleton, Sheryl Crow, Rateliff, Russell, Charley Crockett, Brittney Spencer and others.
A limited number of pre-sale 2023 tickets will be available beginning at 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday (July 12); the pre-sale ends at 5 p.m. on Thursday (July 13), or when pre-sale tickets are sold out. General admission tickets will go on sale on Saturday (July 15) at 10 a.m. ET. here.
“Family farmers have the solutions to some of our toughest challenges,” Nelson added in a statement. “As we face a changing climate, farmers in Indiana, across the Midwest and all over the country are farming in ways that create more resilient farms to build healthy soils and protect our water.”
According to a release, this year’s event will honor Indiana family farmers and others who are taking on climate change using regenerative, organic and sustainable farming practices.
America’s farmers came to Washington, D.C., more than 40 years ago to save their farms. On Tuesday (March 7), a new generation of farmers, ranchers, farmworkers and activists came to the nation’s capital to save the planet.
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John Mellencamp, co-founder of Farm Aid, sang Tuesday for those gathered before they marched up Pennsylvania Avenue to the U.S. Capitol building, calling for Congress to take action on climate change in the forthcoming Farm Bill.
“Here’s all I can say – keep slugging,” said Mellencamp, recalling how he and Willie Nelson and Neil Young formed Farm Aid in 1985 to support family farmers — a commitment they have sustained for four decades, joined by Farm Aid board members Dave Matthews and Margo Price.
“We’ve been slugging since 1985 and let’s keep slugging,” said Mellencamp. “Let’s try to improve the quality of the food that we eat, the air that we breathe and the people that we are.”
Taking the stage midday at Freedom Park, Mellencamp looked at the crowd before him and remarked: “The faces are much younger than they used to be. And I think that’s great that there are younger people trying to improve the planet and the food that we eat. So it’s up to you guys to lead the way.”
With that, Mellencamp played a spare, acoustic rendition of “Rain on the Scarecrow,” his harrowing 1985 song about the farm foreclosure crisis that led to the creation of Farm Aid.
Rain on the scarecrow / blood on the plow This land fed a nation / this land made me proudAnd son, I’m just sorry there’s no legacy for you now
Farm Aid’s own legacy is the rising awareness, since the mid-1980s, of the importance of a national system of agriculture that values family farmers, good food, soil and water, and strong communities.
In recent years, there also has been an increasing awareness that industrial agriculture practiced on large corporate farms is contributing to the climate crisis. In a report in August 2021, the National Resources Defense Council stated that industrial agriculture is a “significant source” of carbon in the atmosphere.
The farmers and activists in D.C. championed what is known as regenerative farming, agriculture methods that can hold carbon in the soil, enhance biodiversity and help mitigate climate change.
Farm Aid, with its annual concerts each September, may be the highest-profile organization drawing attention to the state of American agriculture — and Willie Nelson is certainly the nation’s best-known champion of family farmers. But this week’s gathering dramatically demonstrated that the breadth and scope of the nation’s farm movement transcends Farm Aid.
The Rally for Resistance: Farmers for Climate Action was organized under the umbrella of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and involved some 2 dozen activist organizations and more than 30 delegations of farmers from across the country who converged on Washington to make their voices heard.
On Wednesday, participants in the rally are slated to lobby individual lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Plans for this rally were revealed at the Farm Aid festival in Raleigh, N.C., in September and exclusively reported by Billboard. The spark for the gathering is the current debate over the contents of the Farm Bill, the multi-part, multibillion-dollar legislation that is passed by Congress about every five years and has a massive influence on how the nation’s food is grown. The most recent Farm Bill was passed in 2018 and expires this year.
In September, Farm Aid joined more than 150 organizations in co-signing a letter asking President Biden “to weigh in on the next Farm Bill and demand that Congress build even further on the administration’s actions to date to reduce economic inequality; bridge the nation’s racial divides; end hunger; confront the climate crisis; improve nutrition and food safety; and protect and support farmers, workers, and communities,” wrote Farm Aid communications director Jennifer Fahy.
The evening before Mellencamp’s performance, supporters gathered at Luther Place Memorial Church on Logan Circle, a site of social activism since it was built in 1873. Philip Barker, a Black farmer and longtime activist from North Carolina, summed up the focus of the days of action: farmer-led climate solutions, racial justice in the Farm Bill, and “communities over corporations.”
Sessions during the rally began with land acknowledgements, statements recognizing that the land upon which the nation’s capital was built was taken from indigenous people. Other speakers addressed the particular hardships that BIPOC farmers have experienced through decades of U.S. farm policy. And still others called for immigration reform as a way to address the chronic shortage of labor on America’s farms. Throughout, the voices and crowd chants in Spanish testified to the changing demographics of the nation’s farms.
This gathering in Washington had particular resonance for David Senter, founder of the American Agriculture Movement. In 1979, Senter was one of the organizers of the Tractorcade protest that drew thousands of farmers to the capital. They traveled by tractor, traveling across the U.S. at 15 miles an hour — ”we came in on every East/West interstate, 100 miles a day,” recalls Senter — to lobby Congress for a new Farm Bill to increase crop prices and to have greater influence in agriculture policy. (One farmer at Tuesday’s rally returned with the tractor he’d driven to D.C. in 1979).
Senter then returned to Washington in 1987 to accompany Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp when the two artists testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee about the family farm foreclosure crisis.
Senter was one of the featured speakers Tuesday at the rally in Freedom Park. Since his earlier trips, have the stakes become higher? “We continue to lose family farmers and the farms become larger and larger,” replied Senter. “But we have to figure out how to make place for the next generation of farmers, the young farmers that want to grow food for this country and the world, so that they can survive.
That “absolutely does” include addressing the climate issue, said Senter. “Because we live in an extreme climate situation. I mean, you have floods, tornadoes, wildfires, droughts. It’s just unbelievable the climate extremes we’re experiencing and, of course, farmers, they deal with that every day, trying to produce food. So it’s very important that we get involved with that.”
When Willie Nelson and his fellow artists formed Farm Aid in 1985, he recruited Carolyn Mugar to run the organization. “The earliest Farm Aid files are all stained with spaghetti sauce since I did that work at my kitchen table,” she recalled Tuesday. Then she set off across the country, speaking to farmers at their kitchen tables. (Mugar was recognized for her work on Billboard’s Women in Music list in 2020, the 35th anniversary of Farm Aid).
“What in the Farm Bill can people get behind? Really, the very bottom line of everything is farm viability,” said Mugar. “A farmer cannot really even start getting into regenerative agriculture [to address climate change] if that farm is not financially viable.
“And that means that we’ve really got to look at how farming should be taking place in this country. And do we really want to continue corporate concentrated farming, where the land is toxic and ruined, into the future? Or do we want to support farmers who are trying to keep, maintain and build the soil?”
In dealing with the nation’s lawmakers, said Mugar, “we’ve got to get smarter about what we demand.”
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