Farm Aid draws 20,000 at 1st Bay State concert

Boston Globe
By Rachana Rathi
Globe Staff / September 21, 2008
Original Article Here

MANSFIELD - A West Coast native, Katie Walken gingerly gripped the slippery, wet, and fake udder of a cardboard cutout cow. She squealed as fake milk - in this case water - squirted out.

It was the closest Walken, 26, or friends Sandy Hedges of Weymouth and Carole Cummings of Brooklyn, N.Y., had ever come to milking a cow, but they appreciated the unexpected opportunity at yesterday's benefit concert for Farm Aid at the Comcast Center.

"Since I moved to [Brooklyn] New York," said Walken, a native of Portland, Ore., "I've become more conscious of being healthy and knowing where my food is coming from . . . because it's necessary to make conscious choices in the city."

Walken and her friends were among more than 20,000 people at the sold-out event, held to support family farmers. People came from as far as Texas and Wisconsin to hear headliners such as Farm Aid founders Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp, as well as to network and support the movement.

From hot dogs to popcorn to whole wheat pretzels, the concession stands were filled with organic, locally grown, and family-farm fresh food. Trash cans were clumped in threes - landfill, recycle, and compost.

And rather than selling merchandise, most of the stands were about education, awareness, and advocacy of family-run farms.

"All of us feel like we are living in fragile times," said Carolyn Mugar, executive director of Farm Aid, speaking at a news conference yesterday. "The health of our economy, bodies, and climate is at risk. . . . Family farmers are a model for the nation."

Expected to raise more than $1 million, the annual benefit concert for Farm Aid was held in the organization's home state for the first time in its 23-year history. Farm Aid, based in Somerville, helps family farmers thrive through grants and resource programs, raises awareness about the burgeoning Good Food movement, and promotes fair farm policies and grass-roots organizing campaigns nationwide.

"I was told as a child that the farmer, or agriculture, is the backbone of America," Nelson said at the news conference. "If the bottom rung, the farmer, if it falls down, everything else falls down."

Governor Deval Patrick also stopped by, touting the Commonwealth's commitment to open space and family farmers, who make up 80 percent of the 6,100 farmers in the state.

Mellencamp said the concert continues for many reasons, including the discrepancy in profit margins between family and factory farmers and the fact that suicide has replaced equipment-related deaths as the leading cause of family farm deaths.

In a crowd ranging in age from toddlers to the elderly, the youth appeared to embrace the headliners and the cause.

University of Massachusetts at Amherst freshmen Madeleine Maggio and Noah Simes, volunteers at the event, said it was a movement in which they could make a difference.

"It really feels like this is our generation's cause," said Maggio, 18, of Great Barrington. "If we can get a local food movement going in the United States, it can lead to solving big things - the energy crisis, global trade problems, our foreign diplomacy issues."

The day had a celebratory overtone with lawn chairs, cookouts, and games of Frisbee and beer pong filling the parking lot, and musical acts such as Dave Matthews, Kenny Chesney, the Pretenders, moe., Arlo Guthrie, Steve Earle, Jakob Dylan, and Grace Potter on stage. But the undercurrent was one of concern, particularly in light of the faltering economy.

Numerous family farmers said times were harder than ever, with the costs of fuel, fertilizer, and nitrogen rising as much as fourfold this year.

Joel Greeno, a dairy farmer from Kendall, Wis., and dairy farmer advocate, said in an interview that he is dealing with higher costs and a 30 percent drop in milk prices. He cautioned against being overexcited about the demand for organic products, saying corporations are seeing the demand and trying to change the definition of organic, so they can make more profit.

"When family farmers don't make enough to support their families and business, when they're struggling to make ends meet, the system is broken," Greeno said.

He echoed the words of Matthews, a board member of the organization, who had made an impassioned statement at the news conference earlier about how the world's economic system, not any individual, is at fault for focusing on the bottom line.

"It doesn't care, cannot care, is philosophically opposed to caring about us or our families," Matthews said. "The factory farmers will destroy the planet because that's the nature of what they do. The family farmer will save the planet."