Watch Farm Aid's "Rural Call to Action for All" on Sept. 20

The Farm Aid Festival

Each year, Farm Aid artists and board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews and Margo Price host an annual festival to raise funds to support Farm Aid’s work with family farmers and to inspire people to choose family farm food. Since 1985, Farm Aid, with the support of the artists who contribute their performances each year, has raised nearly $80 million to support programs that help farmers thrive, expand the reach of the Good Food Movement, take action to change the dominant system of industrial agriculture and promote food from family farms.

On Friday, September 20, from 9am – 4:30pm EDT, Farm Aid will hold its annual Farmer Forum in Saratoga Springs, NY. If you can’t make it to New York, you can tune in to watch the event live right here, or on our YouTube channel.

A Rural Call to Action for All

This year’s Farm Aid Farmer Forum, “A Rural Call to Action for All,” will focus on building community power, fighting polarization, strengthening a rural-urban coalition and activism as a tool for hope. The forum will shine light on issues of corporate power, debunk false narratives around climate change and examine racism and discrimination in our food and farming system.

A keynote address will be delivered by Maurice Mitchell, National Director of Working Families Party.

Speakers for the event will include:

Jim Hightower, Author and Activist
Tim Gibbons, Missouri Rural Crisis Center
Dania Davy, Land and Liberation LLC
David Murkasin, FarmSTAND
Kenya Crumel, Black Land & Power Initiative
Eric Sheffer, Sheffer’s Grassland Dairy and Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance
Tracy Lerman, GrownNYC
Għanja O’Flannery, Animal Agriculture Reform Collaborative
Robert Chang, Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust
Dorathy Barker, Operation Spring Plant
Toni Stanger-McLaughlin, Native American Agriculture Fund
Irene Ruiz, Idaho Organization of Resource Councils
Angela Ferguson, Onondaga Nation Farm
… And more!