Farm Aid: The Music Industry’s Longest-Running Philanthropic Concert

Harvesting music’s power:
“What happens at a Farm Aid concert opens up people’s hearts,” says Farm Aid executive director CAROLYN MUGAR (center), at the 2008 event at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, Mass., with DAVE MATTHEWS, JOHN MELLENCAMP, WILLIE NELSON and NEIL YOUNG (from left).
Photo by Mark O'Stow

A great article on Farm Aid organization in BILLBOARD MAGAZINE by Thom Duffy.

Farm Aid is both America’s and the music industry’s longest-running philanthropic concert for a cause.

The support of the music industry has helped Farm Aid influence a profound shift in the cultural landscape of the country during the past quarter century.

The organization’s work, as Nelson has said, simply affects everyone who eats.

Farm Aid deserves credit for promoting many of the positive developments in food culture in the United States in recent years: the growth of farmers markets, the rise of community-supported agriculture groups, the spread of farm-to-table “slow food” restaurants and the wider use of sustainable farming practices.

And those changes in food culture and farming practices, in turn, are affecting much broader issues, from health-care costs to the fight against climate change.

“We started out to save the family farmer,” Nelson says. “Now it looks like the family farmer is going to save us.”

Check out whole article BILLBOARD MAGAZINE (PDF via Farm Aid.)

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