Against the Grain: The Farm Aid Podcast

In this episode of Against the Grain's series on artists and activism, we zero in on artists catching flak for taking a public stand. We'll hear from Allison Russell, Grace Bowers, Emily Nenni and Dylan LeBlanc. Taylor Swift gets a special mention, and not just for the title of the episode!

Farm Aid 40 will be at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Saturday, September 20th. Tickets are still available! farmaid.org/podcast/ for details

In this third episode of Against the Grain's series on Artists and Activism, we talk to artists who come from farming backgrounds and have joined Farm Aid over the years to stand up for family farmers. We hear first from the legendary bluesman, Taj Mahal, who grew up picking tobacco and working on a dairy farm in Massachusetts before studying animal husbandry and agronomy in college. Like Taj, the other artists we talked to for this episode - Cassandra Lewis, Waylon Payne and Charley Crockett - see their musical lives deeply intertwined with their love of the land and...

In this 2nd episode of Against the Grain's series on Artists and Activism, we talk to artists using their storytelling skills and platforms to engage with important social and political issues. You'll hear from Farm Aid board artist Margo Price, Kyshona and Tami Neilson; as well as Steve Duncombe, co-founder of the Center for Artistic Activism. 

In this first episode of Against the Grain's new series, Artists and Activism, we focus on the American folk music tradition. Music journalist Dorian Lynskey provides valuable historical context. He reminds us that music and politics have mixed from the beginning - even before the dawn of recorded sound - but that its folk musicians who popularized activist song and the trend of showing up in solidarity with those fighting oppression. We talk to folk musicians Steve Earle, Rainbow Girls, Tré Burt and Jesse Welles about activism in their music and how they use their music in their activism, a...

Against the Grain is the Farm Aid podcast, designed to bring the magic of Farm Aid’s annual festival to listeners year-round. This season, in our series Artists and Activism, we'll talk to more than two dozen artists who are using their art and their voices as vehicles for political engagement and expression on issues that matter to them - and to all of us.

Against the Grain is heading back to the Luck Reunion festival, held on Farm Aid president Willie Nelson's ranch outside of Austin, Texas. The night before the festival, the Luck Family Foundation puts on a PotLuck dinner, bringing chefs from across the country to prepare a regionally-sourced meal that is cooked over an open fire. Proceeds from this dinner benefit Farm Aid and the Texas Food and Wine Alliance. In past podcast episodes, we featured interviews with chefs we met there last year - folks like Rick Bayless, Bleu Adams and Michel Nischan. In this episode, we highlight some...

In this episode of Against the Grain, join us backstage at Farm Aid 2024 in Saratoga Springs, New York, for an interview with Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones. Farm Aid Board Artist Margo Price invited Representative Jones to join us in Saratoga Springs, and we caught up with him after he and Margo returned from a panel in the HOMEGROWN Village.

You may know Representative Jones already. He's one of the two Tennessee state representatives expelled from the House during a debate over public safety in the wake of a horrific school shooting in Nashville. In a special...

In this special episode of Against the Grain, we dig into our recently digitized archives to highlight Farm Aid's awe-inspiring founder and president, Willie Nelson. You may remember that we discussed how the first Farm Aid concert came together in the first episode of the podcast, but in this episode, we highlight the range of work Willie has done for the family farm movement outside of the annual festival. Year-in and year-out, for forty years, Willie has shown up to work shoulder-to-shoulder with farmers and ranchers whenever they've needed him. For this episode, we unearthed some archival audio of...

In this episode of Against the Grain, we take you to the FarmYard Stage at Farm Aid 2024 in Saratoga Springs, New York. There we made our first recording of an Against the Grain episode in front of a live audience, under the big tent out in Farm Aid's HOMEGROWN Village. Every year at Farm Aid, farmers and artists come together on the FarmYard Stage to talk about pressing farm and food issues. The Against the Grain panel discussion featured two rockstar farmers, Hope LaBonty of Loving Earth Compost and Elizabeth Ryan of Breezy Hill Orchards, along with bona fide...

In the midst of this election season, the shocking devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton seemed to get attention from the candidates only briefly. Media coverage, meanwhile, has tended to focus on the bigger population centers, while the destruction to family farms and the food systems of which they are a part is barely mentioned. And yet, according to USDA estimates, crop losses alone could trigger seven billion dollars in insurance payouts, while the Associated Press reports damage to property could be as high as 26 billion dollars. 

At Farm Aid, our hotline operators hear from farmers in t...

On this episode of Against the Grain, we’re bringing you as close as possible to an actual taste of the Farm Aid festival... We're talking about the mind-blowing, family farm food that festivalgoers eat each year at Farm Aid! Our guests are Farm Aid's Associate Director, Glenda Yoder and our Culinary Director, Sonya Dagovitz who, together, established HOMEGROWN Concessions® in 2007. As Farm Aid moves around the country every year, they swap out the food normally served at the venue for food sourced from family farmers who follow specific ecological standards and who get paid a fair price. The foo...

As we heard throughout the first season of Against the Grain, American farmers have historically struggled to get the United States Department of Agriculture to listen to, and address their most pressing concerns. That was certainly true when Farm Aid was founded in the midst of the 1980s farm crisis when farmers were pushed off their land due to loan foreclosures. We've also heard that there's a range of reasons why farmers - particularly farmers of color and Tribal producers - feel a sense of distrust towards the USDA. But the USDA recently announced major rule changes that affect...

Food desert is a term that is used in reference to the absence of good quality, nutritious food in a particular geographic area. But as Chef Bleu Adams of Indigehub says in this episode of Against the Grain, a more appropriate term is "food apartheid" because there's nothing natural about the absence of good food for Native Americans. For Tribal producers and eaters, the legacy of colonization and land theft carries on in the structures of food apartheid on what is, ostensibly, tribal land. As Kari Jo Lawrence and Abi Fain of the Intertribal Agriculture Council tell us, a...

As Farm Aid artist Micah Nelson says, "the soil is the most fundamental source of life." When Micah and his family were riding out the pandemic at their ranch in Luck, Texas, they decided to start growing their own food. But as anyone who lives in Texas Hill Country can tell you, it is rough, rugged terrain, frequently distinguished by densely packed, seemingly inhospitable earth. Fortunately, Micah's mother, Farm Aid board member Annie Nelson, encountered Tina and Orion Weldon at the farmers market they launched in Spicewood, TX, and invited them to collaborate. In this episode of Against the...

We just got back from Luck Reunion, a music festival held on Farm Aid president Willie Nelson's ranch every March.  There, we got to interview a lot of artists, farmers, and chefs.  In this special bonus episode, you'll hear from superstar chef Rick Bayless, who traveled to Luck from Chicago.  Rick recounts how, years ago, when he lived in Mexico, he noticed that no matter where he traveled, if folks had a really strong local agricultural economy, the food in the restaurants and in people's homes just tasted better.  In this episode, Rick talks about how over the last 37 year...

How do farmers lose land? As Kenya Crumel of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance says, it's not like losing a set of keys: "Nobody's just accidentally losing land." Rather, she explains land has been taken – specifically from Black farmers – through a variety of means over the last century. The decline is staggering! In the 1920s Black farmers held somewhere between 15 and 19 million acres of land and represented 14% of all American farmers. Today, Black farmers represent 1% of all American farmers and own as little as 2 million acres of land. In this episode of Against the Grain, we hear from...

We know some of you may be traveling in the next week or two, so we created this bonus episode as our holiday gift to you. In this episode we’ll highlight one of our Farm Aid board members, the legendary Neil Young. Enjoy and happy holidays from Against the Grain and Farm Aid. Learn more at https://www.farmaid.org/blog/neil-young-truth-to-power/

As Farm Aid board artist Dave Matthews says, “the vast majority of people are good, the vast majority of people are community driven and want to take care of each other,” and understanding that fact can motivate us to change the farm and food systems that prioritize corporate profits over communities. In this second episode of Against the Grain, called “Hoodwinked,” you’ll hear from artists Dave Matthews and Allison Russell, former contract poultry farmer and whistleblower Craig Watts, and organizer Tim Gibbons about the scourge of industrial agriculture that has come to dominate our farm and food systems in recent...

 As Farm Aid’s Executive Director, Carolyn Mugar says, “Music opens you up … you hear what's happening and you can take it in.” In this first episode of Against the Grain called, “There’s Something About Music,” you’ll hear from Margo Price, David Senter, and Carolyn Mugar about the power of music as a vehicle for social change. They’ll also regale you with stories — including archival sound from Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan — about the origins of Farm Aid. Learn more at: www.farmaid.org/podcast

A sneak peek at what's ahead on Against the Grain!