Farm Aid is a benefit concert organized by Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young (original organizers), Dave Matthews (joined in 2001) and Margo Price (joined in 2021), to support family farms. The first concert was held in 1985 and has been held every year since. It was a really big deal back in the 80’s and early 90’s. The concert was giant with all sorts of musicians including Bob Dylan, Elton John, Alabama, Bonnie Raitt, Ringo Starr, Beach Boys, Phish,Sheryl Crow, playing and at least 20,000 people attending. For a few years, it was broadcast on TNN and CMT. Every year it’s held in a different state with a few states hosting more than one Farm Aid. In 2020, all of the Farm Aid performers were remote in their own locations and the event was livestreamed for FREE online. I was pretty excited to ‘go to’ my first Farm Aid concert. In 2021, the concert was brought back in person. Thankfully it is still being livestreamed for free. This year Farm Aid 2023 is being held on September 23 in Noblesville, Indiana. Tickets are sold out, but it will be livestreamed at farmaid.org and on the Farm Aid YouTube channel starting at 11:30 am ET.
Farm Aid’s mission is “to build a vibrant, family farm-centered system of agriculture in America”.
Some issues Farm Aid supports include:
– Stop corporate control of the food system and return control to the farmers
– Support The Good Food Movement to help with making food from family farmers affordable and available to all and help family farms grow
– Change farm policies to bring fair prices to farmers, so they can make an actual living
– Fix the broken food system by strengthening local and regional food systems that work for farmers
– Help farmers to grow food without GMO contamination, push for independent review of GMO crops, seafood, and livestock , help farmers meet demand for non-GMO foods, transparency in the food system with mandatory GMO labeling
– Fight against industrial agriculture
– Invest in the long term health of soil, water and the climate. Industrial agriculture contributes 40% of greenhouse gas emissions while sustainable agriculture contributes far less and uses healthy soil that even puts carbon back into the soil. Family farms also use less water.
So, why should you care about helping support Farm Aid? It’s because the small farmers and the issues they support are what impact the food that people need to eat in order to improve their health. The food from your local farmer’s market is much fresher than the same type of food purchased in the grocery store. Since the food is fresher, it has more nutrients. It also probably has far less, if any, pesticides and isn’t genetically modified. The more people who support Farm Aid, the more farmers they can help which will lead to the production of more nutritious food for people to improve their health with. Farm Aid is the backdoor people have to improving the food system. They are already a large organization set up to help farmers, ie: the people who grow the life giving food. The government certainly isn’t going to do anything to help. They just create more policies to grow industrial agriculture and more frankenfoods and push small farms out of business. Growing the Farm Aid organization will do the opposite.
Challenge:
Buy local food. Search out your nearest farmer’s market or local csa. Shop small. Many farmer’s even ship food to other states.
You can even get fresh papaya shipped to you from Hawaii.
Remember to tune into and support Farm Aid on September 23, 2023 at 11:30 am ET at farmaid.org or the Farm Aid YouTube channel.
Resources:
https://www.farmaid.org/