More than 26000 attend Farm Aid in Chicago

30 years ago today (9/22/85) the first Farm Aid benefit concert was held before a crowd of 80,000 people at the Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois – the same summer that saw Live Aid. Brock recalled once answering the crisis hotline call of a financially distraught farmer. The Las Vegas band brought the same full-scale, spectacular light show they’ve featured on the summer tour – but only here did fans get those great visuals against the backdrop of the Chicago skyline. “All different types of people are coming together for family farmers, and we’re making a difference”. These artists-Farm Aid’s three founders and Dave Matthews, who joined the effort in 2001-are a driving force of Farm Aid. The conversation, moderated by WBEZ radio’s food and agriculture correspondent, Monica Eng, focused on the many actions people have taken in fields, kitchens and communities since 1985 and how those actions have added up to make a huge difference for family farmers and the food system. Can you share with us a little bit more about its original inception? But all acknowledged the work that must continue.

Tickets for the event are available through the Farm Aid website. “But we’re up against some of the same policies and corporate influences that gave rise to the need for Farm Aid in 1985″. With a handful of exceptions, it’s been put on annually ever since.

However, farm advocates say that in the years since then, Congress has blocked funding for the agency to enforce those rules, while critics say that committee members are influenced by lobbying from companies such as Tyson and advocacy groups such as the National Chicken Council.

The sound of good music and the smell of good food filled the air on Daley Plaza on Thursday afternoon as the Loop got a preview of a music festival that helps farmers. Other artists on the day-long Farm Aid 30 bill include Jack Johnson, Imagine Dragons, Kacey Musgraves, Old Crow Medicine Show, Mavis Staples, Holly Williams, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Insects vs. Robots and Blackwood Quartet.

Live Aid is a memory. Farm Aid supports and strengthens grassroots power and the essential connection between farmers and eaters.