When I showed up to Farm Aid, all of the media people could go to a press event before the actual concert started. Everything seemed normal at first. They had some farmers sitting upfront while they played video clips telling their stories and then short interviews with each one afterward. That part was pretty cool, to be honest.
To the right of the farmers were some of the artists that were gonna be taking the stage once the concert began. Of course, Willie Nelson was there, along with John Mellencamp, Neil Young, and Dave Matthews.
Once they let the artists start talking, that's when things got interesting. Tanya Tucker, for instance, she got up and started thanking the farmers, but then went off about large farms. She went on a little rant about how “factory farms” are ruining things for us and how we shouldn't buy from them because their animals are in crates. I remember her saying how she doesn't want to eat an animal that was raised in a crate and then is now on her table. I'm not sure where she was getting her information. Are there some farms out there that do that? I'm sure there are.
But the fact that she clumps every large farm together makes you realize that she doesn't know what she's talking about. Just because your farm is large, that doesn't mean the animals are treated with any less care than a smaller farm. Then once that was over, one of the other artists took the mic and said that by this time next year he hopes that there are more small farms in Wisconsin because we don't need any more large farms. First off, that will never happen anymore. That's when I just got upset.
Secondly, here's the news that he forgot to tell the audience…he forgot to mention the hundreds of small farms that went out of business or sold over the past year. He forgot to talk about how for a lot of people, it's not profitable for them to keep running a small scale farm. He missed what's going on around us every day.
Once that was over and the concert started, there was a tent that you could go in and talk to different farmers and farming associations and programs. When you enter the tent you right away realize that the agenda being pushed is strictly organic. Nothing conventional was being talked about. After that, if you wanted to get some food, don't worry, they had a message for us too. Some of them had on bright red shirts with a big stop sign on them saying “STOP FACTORY FARMS”.
The message was all over the place, there were even some people with shirts talking about Monsanto and other ag businesses. I just didn't understand how they justified tearing down one side of agriculture while repping another side. The whole thing was strange to me because the event is painted to be this thing where “all farmers come together for one good cause” but then when you actually get there you realize what's going on. As someone who comes from a larger farm, I thought what they were doing was very low. You're either with agriculture or you aren't. Simple as that.
I was getting so worked up about everything that was happening there that I called my mom to tell her what the event was REALLY about. I thought my biggest issue with the event woulda been the $7 waters they were selling. Man, was I wrong. For something that's supposed to be supporting farmers, it was almost embarrassing to say that we were a part of it and that we were covering it. I just wanted to remove myself after the first hour of being there.
Funny how something as big as this can be painted in such a way that you walk in with great expectations and I was seriously happy to go spend my day “supporting the farmers”. By the end, I could say that I will never go back to Farm Aid, and also that I'm upset I had to spend a Saturday being there.
It sucks that something that could be so cool has turned into this. Maybe in the past it wasn't like this? I can't say. Somewhere along the way, they ended up taking a turn for the worse. Thanks Farm Aid, great job.
