FARM AID: A SONG FOR AMERICA features in-depth interviews with Farm Aid President and Founder Willie Nelson, as well as board members Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews, who offer their reflections about food, family farming and music, revealing the depth of their personal and family commitment. Readers are given a front row seat at the performances of the vast and varied roster of Farm Aid performers — from Arlo Guthrie and Bob Dylan to Eddie Van Halen, Phish, and Sheryl Crow.
*STAR*Farm Aid: A Celebration of the American Family Farm. Ed. by Holly George-Warren. Sept. 2005.
Twenty years ago, Willie Nelson decided to have an all-star, open-air concert to call attention to the plight of American family farmers, then being squeezed off the land in record numbers by low commodity prices and high short-term indebtedness. In less than a month, the first Farm Aid concert occurred, and a long-term support system was born. The most impressive organizational fact in this lavish, compelling overview is that Farm Aid has only seven employees, not counting any of the musicians and technicians involved in the concerts, who all donate their work. The most impressive revelation about Farm Aid for most readers will probably be the range of work by and on behalf of farmers that it supports between concerts. Spot cash relief for families too strapped to buy groceries, crisis counseling for farmers who lose hope and even the will to live, financial advice and political advocacy, efforts to foster organic farming and cooperation and understanding between farmer and eater (the latter word is strongly preferred to the cold, economic label consumer), encouragement of local specialty farming (i.e., of particular varieties of a food crop)–Farm Aid backs all this and more, and working farmers and writers including Wendell Berry and Jim Hightower discuss it here. Filling out one of the meatiest, most satisfying books of the year are long interviews with Farm Aid musician-directors Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews; sidebars about repeat Farm Aid concert performers, staff, and attendees; poems and song lyrics about farming; and hundreds of pictures, the large majority in color. –Ray Olson