Farm Aid's annual music and food festival is returning to Saratoga Springs, New York, on Saturday, Sept. 21, at Broadview Stage at Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC).
Farm Aid 2024 — a full day of music, family farmers, HOMEGROWN food and agrarian experiences — will feature performances by Farm Aid board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews (with Tim Reynolds), as well as Mavis Staples, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Lukas Nelson with The Travelin’ McCourys, Charley Crockett, Joy Oladokun, Southern Avenue, Cassandra Lewis and Jesse Welles, with more artists to be announced.
The festival will highlight how family farmers are essential for a secure supply of safe, nutritious food; healthy soil and water; and strong, economically vibrant communities. Farm Aid 2024 will highlight innovative, resilient farmers on the Farm Aid stage and throughout the event. As farmers and farm and food advocates converge from across the country for the annual festival, Farm Aid will host additional pre-festival events that gather farmers and farm advocates to spotlight their work and strengthen their unity and power.
This is the third Farm Aid festival to take place in New York, and the second in Saratoga Springs. In 2007, Farm Aid held its festival at Randall’s Island, New York, where Farm Aid’s HOMEGROWN Concessions® was first introduced. In 2013, the festival returned to the Empire State, this time to Saratoga Springs. Surprise guest Pete Seeger joined Willie, John, Neil and Dave onstage for one of his last public performances.
“We’re energized to be back in New York. The farmers here have always found ways to innovate and contribute to their communities, even as they deal with uncertainties, extreme weather and policies that favor corporations over people,” said Farm Aid President and Founder Willie Nelson. “Farmers need us to stand with them as they work to grow our future.”
The 2022 U.S. Department of Agriculture Census shows that between 2017 and 2022, New York State lost 3,000 of its 33,000 farms. Like elsewhere in the U.S., farms are declining due to rising production and labor costs, consolidation and abnormal weather patterns. New York State has nearly 3,200 dairy farms that produce 15.7 billion pounds of milk annually, making New York the country’s fifth largest dairy state. Dairy farms have been hit particularly hard with rising production and labor costs, as well as consolidation in the dairy industry. All New York farmers are on the frontlines of climate change, innovating to address crop losses, disease and heat stress due to rising temperatures, as well as extreme weather events like flooding. Temperatures are projected to increase, further threatening both the maple and dairy industries.
Farm Aid festival attendees will experience a full day of music and the taste of local flavors with Farm Aid’s HOMEGROWN Concessions®, offering a diverse, fresh menu with ingredients that are grown or raised by family farmers using ecological practices with a fair price paid to the farmers. Farm Aid’s HOMEGROWN Village features hands-on activities engaging festivalgoers with exhibits about soil, water, energy, food and farming. Festivalgoers can hear farmers and artists inform and inspire on the FarmYard Stage and celebrate the know-how and diversity of cultures of agriculture in the HOMEGROWN Skills tent.
Farm Aid’s mission is to build a vibrant, family farm-centered system of agriculture in America. 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. For more than 35 years, 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.
