Cultivating a Broader Purpose

On its 20th anniversary, Farm Aid expands its mission

In the 27 years that Tom Trantham has raised and milked dairy cows, he has seen his share of troubles. Although he

developed a system that provides his cows with year-round grazing of homegrown crops — a rarity in the dairy business — his farm has come perilously close to going out of business.

When one of the worst droughts of the century parched his Pelzer, S.C., farm in 1992, Mr. Trantham was left without the ground-covering crops needed to feed his herd of 90. Because milk prices had dropped to an all-time low, he couldn’t afford to buy feed, either.

“The drought was over, but so were my crops,” says Mr. Trantham. As he and his farming neighbors faced the same travails, he wondered how they would make it from August to the following April.

But, with help from Farm Aid, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping America’s family farmers stay on their land, their farms survived through the winter. A haylift organized by the charity trucked in bales from altruistic farmers in Indiana and Michigan.

“The idea was to stick with us,” says Mr. Trantham. “Farm Aid knows that they should stick with you until a crisis is over. Without them, there’s no question I could have lost my farm.”

Now celebrating its 20th year, Farm Aid, in Somerville, Mass., has become known for its efforts to aid family farmers, such as Mr. Trantham, who are often one disaster away from insolvency and foreclosure, as well as for its annual all-star concert, which helps raise the money to make its work possible.

Helping Katrina’s Victims

Farm Aid was created in 1985 after Willie Nelson heard another musician, Bob Dylan, mention during his performance at that summer’s Live Aid concert, a benefit for victims of African famine relief, that someone should mount such a show to help the American farmer.

Since its inception, Farm Aid has harvested a total of $25-million from its concerts and other fund-raising efforts. But when the charity holds its anniversary concert in suburban Chicago on September 18, it will do more than raise money to provide emergency help to the nation’s distressed food producers.

Two decades of change have led the organization to broaden its mission. Even as it asks for donations to help farmers in the Deep South whose livelihoods have been threatened by Hurricane Katrina, Farm Aid 2005 will introduce its audience to growers who have switched from conventional methods that use high concentrations of chemical fertilizers and hormones to techniques that are safer for consumers and the environment. Along with hearing musical performances by Mr. Nelson and his fellow Farm Aid co-founders, John Mellencamp and Neil Young, as well as more than a dozen other musical acts, audience members will be encouraged to grow or buy organic produce.

By enlarging its perspective, Farm Aid is now in a better position to serve the 500,000 families nationwide who work the land for a living, say its leaders. Family farmers face challenges from large-scale growers, the low prices that farm produce commands in the marketplace, increasing poverty, and natural disasters that can sometimes force them off their homesteads.

“We’ve been able to be where farmers need us to be during emergencies, but we changed in order to support them in their fight against corporate farming,” says Wendy Matusovich, the charity’s development director. “Then, we changed again to support the farmer’s place in the good-food movement.”

Because of a strongly committed, high-profile board, success at attracting donors, and a lean budget, Farm Aid has been able to propel itself into the middle of the nation’s debate about how food should be grown and sold. That is a sharp contrast to several other efforts in the 1980s to enlist musicians and other performers to call attention to causes, such as Hands Across America and Live Aid, which sought to fight hunger and homelessness but ceased to exist after a flash of publicity.

Organic Agriculture

Some farmers say that the charity’s efforts may help them improve the quality of food that makes its way to grocery shelves, the way it is grown, and the economic lot of those who harvest it. Nearly 70 percent of the nation’s two million farms lost money in 2002, the last year for which figures are available, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Kim Seeley, a dairy farmer in north-central Pennsylvania, says that Farm Aid has successfully connected farmers with consumers, as well as holding conferences that introduce environmentally sensitive family farming to school cafeterias and other potential markets.

“Farm Aid does a lot of networking, so that producers are linked with processors and consumers,” says Mr. Seeley, a board member of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, a Farm Aid grantee in Millheim, Pa. “That’s important, because if sustainable agriculture, such as organic farming, is going to be successful, it will be because small farmers will have created a demand, then banded together to sell it. If we continue to operate the way we have been, we’ll never make it because the deck is stacked against us by corporate farms that can set their own prices.”

A desire to help farmers find new markets and reinvigorate local economies has spurred the charity forward in the past decade, says Glenda Yoder, Farm Aid’s associate director. Ironically enough, Farm Aid’s spartan economics — it runs on a $1-million annual budget and keeps no capital funds in reserve — play a part in diagnosing the needs of farmers and setting the charity’s direction. “We function year to year. We stay lean and mean, and keep our finger to the wind,” says Ms. Yoder. “That’s what keeps us going.”

Star Power, Staying Power

The charity has worked hard to make sure it is dealing with the most-pressing real-world needs by maintaining running dialogues with hundreds of farmers, starting with Mr. Nelson’s discussions with growers at truck stops during a tour 20 years ago.

Farm Aid has distributed about two-thirds of the $25-million it has raised since 1985 to other organizations that help farmers in need or encourage small-scale agricultural efforts. Farm Aid also runs its own emergency telephone hotline for farmers and lobbies lawmakers to overhaul agricultural policies, which the charity says favor large producers at the expense of smaller operators.

Farm Aid’s endurance can be traced to the celebrities who give it a public face, says Carolyn Mugar, the organization’s executive director. “We’ve hung in there because of the unbelievable tenacity of our board-member artists,” she says. In addition to the founding musicians, the singer Dave Matthews joined the charity’s board in 2001.

But, Ms. Mugar adds, Farm Aid’s longevity also owes much to the intractability of difficulties facing small farmers, who must survive during an era of growing competition from large, corporation-owned farms.

“When Willie chose the board before the first concert, he thought that bringing attention to the plight of farmers would solve many of their problems,” Ms. Mugar says. “Foreclosures were front-page news then.”

But in the two years following the first Farm Aid show, which pulled in $7-million in ticket sales and donations, tens of thousands of Americans were forced to leave their farms. Since then, says Ms. Mugar, “Farm Aid has been about promoting change, as well as providing help. We realized there was so much more to do and that many of these problems were systemic.”

Farm Aid’s celebrity board members continue to lobby for fair treatment for small growers, a practice started by Mr. Nelson in 1987 when he and Mr. Mellencamp, joined by a handful of family farmers, testified before the U.S. Congress to urge passage of a law that would make it harder for banks and the federal government to foreclose on farm property. (The law was enacted shortly thereafter.)

More recently, Farm Aid has lobbied against the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Central American Free Trade Agreement, because, Mr. Nelson has said, the federal government has set market prices to appease corporate growers, to the detriment of independent farmers.

Last year, Mr. Nelson personally signed grant checks totaling $352,000 to 47 groups representing a wide array of family-farm causes. Among the challenges small farmers face:

Dwindling numbers. From 1974 to 2002, the number of farms in the United States declined by nearly 20 percent, according to the Department of Agriculture. Farm Aid officials say that 330 farmers leave their land each week. Some sell their farms to real-estate developers, but large agricultural conglomerates buy many more small farms, says Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs, a 12,000-member advocacy group for small farmers, in Lyons, Neb.

“There has been a dramatic consolidation in agriculture in the last 20 years,” says Mr. Hassebrook. “It’s the result of federal farm policy. Large farms get the bulk of farm payments from the government, which puts pressure on small farmers because the larger concerns want to buy their land and have the money to do it.”

Three percent of farms with $500,000 or more in income account for 62 percent of all federal farm subsidies and sales, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Low prices for produce. Because they can guarantee delivery of large numbers of products, farms owned by corporations, such as Cargill or Smithfield, can command premium prices for meat, milk, and vegetables.

Unfavorable weather. Mr. Seeley and his neighbors in north-central Pennsylvania are suffering through the 10th year of a drought. He says that many small farmers are too busy to learn new ways to deal with such problems and frequently run in the red when they occur.

The American Farm Bureau, in Washington, estimates Hurricane Katrina will mean at least $1-billion in damage to farms and another $1-billion in indirect costs, such as fuel and shipping. Farm Aid’s Family Farm Disaster Fund has already sent an initial grant of $30,000 to several farm organizations in the Southeast, which will allow the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and the Louisiana Interchurch Conference to begin assessing storm damage and relief needs.

Expanded Fund Raising

To pay for much of its advocacy, emergency-aid, and other efforts on behalf of farmers — as well as the salaries of its nine-member staff — Farm Aid has expanded its fund raising beyond concerts.

The organization has developed regular direct-mail campaigns, sold concert memorabilia on the online auction site eBay, sought out corporate sponsorships, stepped up Web solicitations, and redoubled its efforts with individual donors who have made large gifts in the past. About half of the charity’s annual income now comes from those sources, says Ms. Matusovich.

Farm Aid sends out 30,000 fliers four times per year in search of donations, says Ms. Matusovich: One mailing announces the charity’s annual concert, another might tout emergency assistance, and the other two center on farm issues, such as helping farmers convert from conventional to environmentally friendly farming techniques.

“We don’t have canned packages year in and year out, and we don’t buy lists or prospects,” says Ms. Matusovich. “We get a lot of $250, $500, and $1,000 donations.”

Farm Aid’s appeals typically attract donations from a significant percentage of recipients. “We frequently get a return of about 20 percent,” says Ms. Matusovich. “Some of our concert mailings have returned as high as 40 percent.”

Nonprofit groups typically see donations from 5.4 percent of recipients of direct-mail solicitations, on average, according to the Direct Marketing Association, a trade organization in New York.

Those who pledge $250 or more receive special attention. “We try to find out what their interest in the issue is, then tailor our pitches to that,” says Ms. Matusovich. A large donor might be escorted by a “hospitality volunteer” at a concert — someone who will meet them at the front gate, run errands for them, and give them backstage tours.

Meanwhile, Web donations have increased from $20,000 in 2003 to $200,000 in the past 12 months. An e-mail newsletter that keeps prospective donors up to date on Farm Aid’s activities has stoked online contributions, says Ms. Matusovich.

As its donations have grown, so has the charity’s vision of its likely donors. While the typical donor has been a lover of country music or someone who either worked on a farm or had one in the family, today Farm Aid is also focusing on mothers who worry about the quality of the food they are feeding their families. One of Farm Aid’s messages — that family farmers are instrumental in guaranteeing the availability of quality food — is “making inroads” with young families, says Ms. Matusovich.

“We’re doing our part to create a new food system,” she says to sum up her charity’s new mission. That is a long way from the group’s humble beginnings. Farm Aid’s leaders admit that they didn’t see the organization lasting nearly as long as 20 years when Mr. Nelson organized the first concert. Despite its staying power, they say that they would like to bow out when its mission is complete.

“We’ve always said we’d like to go out of business,” says Ms. Mugar.

But some of the farmers the charity has helped over the years wonder if that will ever be possible. Like the barn-raisings of yore, farmers will always need help from one another, says Mr. Trantham.

When a drought struck farms in Texas and Oklahoma in 1996, he and other South Carolina farmers baled hay and sent it out to them, with help from Farm Aid. “There was a sign that came with the bales we got when we needed them during a drought in 1986,” says Mr. Trantham. “It was written on a piece of plywood that said ‘Texas and Oklahoma care.’” When we sent hay to them during their crisis in 1996, we turned the plywood over and wrote on the back, ‘South Carolina cares too.’”

He wouldn’t be surprised to see the same plank return to Pelzer one day. “If there’s one truth, it is that farmers will occasionally need help,” says Mr. Trantham. “It’s never over.”