40 Great Moments From 40 Years of Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid: ‘It’s the Music and the Message That Opens Up People’s Hearts’

Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid is unlike any other festival. It has always been about more than the music.

Launched by Nelson and fellow musicians in 1985 to respond to the economic crisis that was devastating family farmers and their communities, Farm Aid this year marks its 40th anniversary as music’s longest running concert for a cause.

This year’s Farm Aid takes place Saturday (Sept. 20) at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis with a bill headlined by Farm Aid’s guiding board members—Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young, Dave Matthews and Margo Price—along with Kenny Chesney, Billy Strings, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Lukas Nelson, Trampled by Turtles, Wynonna Judd, Steve Earle, Waxahatchee, Eric Burton of Black Pumas, Jesse Wells, Madeline Edwards and the Wisdom Indian Dancers.

Like all the artists who have appeared at Farm Aid before them, these performers will donate their time, expenses and fees to help the family farmers who feed the nation.

Farm Aid fans know that, once a year, Nelson and friends have taken to stages across the country for a high-profile show to benefit America’s independent family farmers.

What they may not realize, even after 40 years, is that Farm Aid has helped influence a profound shift in the cultural landscape of the country. The organization deserves credit for promoting many of the most important changes in food culture in the United States: the growth of farmers’ markets, the spread of farm-to-table restaurants, and the rise of sustainable farming methods that are helping to address climate change. Through the years, with days of sessions preceding the concert itself, Farm Aid has evolved as an impassioned annual gathering for activists involved in environmental, racial and social justice issues, as well as farming.

“It’s the combination of the music and the message that is so important,” Farm Aid’s former executive director Carolyn Mugar once said. “What happens at a Farm Aid concert opens up people’s hearts.” 

Farm Aid, of course, is part of a great chain of musicians leveraging their songs for society — from the singers who joined Martin Luther King Jr. for the March on Washington in 1963, to Pete Seeger’s pass-the-basket concerts in the late 1960s to launch the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, to George Harrison’s Concerts for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden in 1971, to Bob Geldof’s Live Aid mega benefit for Africa famine relief in1985, to the poverty-fighting Global Citizen Festival launched in 2012, to the FireAid benefits earlier this year, and countless other initiatives through the decades.

Musicians have often offered their talents to meet the needs of the moment— and then moved on. The focus and longevity of Farm Aid is unique.

What also sets Farm Aid apart is the inclusive, charitable and tough spirit of founder Willie Nelson. “Farming was my first job,” he once told Billboard. “I picked ­cotton. I pulled corn. I knew firsthand what it meant to farm. I knew damn well how tough it was. My farm roots are deep-seated in the soil of my personal story.”

And in his small hometown of Abbott, Texas, where he attended the United Methodist Church, Nelson recalled, “we had a ­collection box, and even though we were ­struggling financially, I knew there were folks with far greater struggles. As part of a ­loving community, I was taught the moral responsibility of ­helping those in need.”

Farm Aid’s guiding board members “are just like farmers, they never give up,” Mugar has said. “They’re stubborn, they’re clever, they’re strategic and it’s because of them that this organization has been effective.”

So this look back at 40 great moments from 40 years of Farm Aid is about more than just the music. Drawn from Farm Aid’s own timeline and Billboard’s many years of coverage of the festival, this list highlights not just great onstage moments, but also the activism, the artist voices — and the joy of late summer tomatoes from an urban farm. Find it all below.