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Saturday’s star-studded concert will air on TV for the first time in years as the hotline for farmers gets more calls about a mix of complicated problems.
Sept. 19, 2025Updated 9:31 a.m. ET
There was never supposed to be a hotline.
The first Farm Aid benefit concert, organized by Willie Nelson in 1985, was intended as a one-off. 1-800-FARM-AID was the phone number people watching the concert on television could call to donate money.
But the next day, the number received more calls from farmers, asking to “talk to Willie,” organizers said. Mr. Nelson and other concert organizers quickly realized there was an ongoing need, and Farm Aid concerts — and the farmer help hotline — have continued ever since.
Farm Aid 40 takes place in Minneapolis on Saturday, with Mr. Nelson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and others performing. They will pay all their own costs, and ticket revenue and money raised will go to Farm Aid, now one of the most well-established nonprofits within agriculture.
The 40th anniversary concert comes at an auspicious time, as American farmers face perhaps the bleakest economic conditions since the 1980s farm crisis that spurred the first Farm Aid. Prices are down across a range of crops, so many growers will lose money on each acre they harvest this fall, and farm bankruptcies are beginning to rise.
“Farmer after farmer who we’ve talked to while traveling across the state of Minnesota this summer has said ‘This is just like it was in the ’80s,’” said Jennifer Fahy, Farm Aid’s co-executive director.
Farm Aid was forged in crisis. Farm profits in 1983 were the lowest since at least 1910. Between 1985 and 1987 nearly 200 agricultural banks failed as land prices plummeted and farmers defaulted on loans.
Farm Aid’s priorities have changed alongside the American food system since the 1980s. When Ms. Fahy joined the organization in the early 2000s, a lot of its focus was on the so-called “Good Food Movement,” encouraging Americans to understand how their food was grown and raised.
Now it is back to crisis.
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The face, or perhaps ear, of Farm Aid’s response is Tony Glover, one of the organization’s hotline operators. Each year, hundreds of farmers call the hotline, seeking help with practically every issue under the sun.
Earlier this week, Mr. Glover said, he spoke with a farmer struggling with mounting debts. The farmer owned a few hundred acres of land that he farmed, which he could sell to pay off his debts. But then he would not be able to continue farming, and he wouldn’t have anything to pass on to his children.
“What he conveyed to me is his main issue was he didn’t have a reason to go on living,” said Mr. Glover. “Farmers really feel so deeply connected to the land, and the loss of land, to them, indicates that they were a total failure in life and oftentimes leads to despair and even suicide.”
Sometimes Mr. Glover fields hopeful calls, like from young adults who want to know how they can begin a career in farming. But by the very nature of the hotline, mostly what he hears about are problems. Five years ago those tended to be discrete problems with discrete solutions, like weather- or pest-related disasters. What concerns him most is that in the last year there has been an increase in calls from farmers with midsize plots who have a host of problems that are harder to solve.
These are usually sophisticated farmers who understand well the various loss coverage, commodity assistance and crop insurance programs available to them. They don’t call Mr. Glover when their financial difficulties first emerge, but only when they have grown to be near inescapable.
“We often don’t hear from folks like that until they are in a desperation situation, and so I think that number will increase because more and more farmers are getting into those situations,” said Mr. Glover.
The causes of farmers’ problems are complex, and affect them unevenly. But generally, over the past few years the cost of essentials like tractors, fertilizer and seeds have outpaced inflation, while the prices farmers receive for their crops — whether it be corn, soybeans, cotton or sorghum — have flatlined. These challenges have been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s immigration and tariff policies, which have driven up the cost of labor and reduced agricultural exports to a number of countries, particularly China.
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Earlier this month, hundreds of agriculture organizations banded together to implore Congress pass a new Farm Bill, which was supposed to happen in 2023; instead, the old Farm Bill has been extended twice. The agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, said on Monday the department was working with Congress to give farmers economic aid this fall. Such efforts put Farm Aid in a difficult spot. The organization has lobbied Congress before, like when the Agricultural Credit Act was passed in 1987.
But while the group wants farmers to receive financial help, Farm Aid’s vision for American farming — small and medium family farms growing healthy and nutritious food for Americans who live nearby — is often at odds with farmers who grow single crops destined for foreign markets.
“Farmers faced the constant challenges of competing in an ever-consolidating market that favors corporations; trying to earn a fair price in unfair markets; and weather, including extreme weather and natural disasters exacerbated by climate change,” Farm Aid wrote in its latest financial filing to the Internal Revenue Service.
Ms. Fahy said that when Farm Aid gets involved in rescue programs, it is to advocate for more of the money to flow toward smaller family farms, and lamented that most rescue programs were based around economic loss, and did not consider more holistic concerns.
For the first time in a number of years, the Farm Aid concert will be shown live on television Saturday night, for six hours, on CNN. Mark Preston, a CNN vice president in charge of special programming, said he had conversations with Farm Aid for a number of years, but this was the first one where broadcasting the concert worked out.
Mr. Preston, who also organizes CNN’s political debates and town halls, said, besides getting to feature Willie Nelson, the network wanted to show Farm Aid because it could get viewers from across the political spectrum interested in agricultural policy and solutions to help farmers.
“I don’t even know where the finances are on this,” he said. “I can guarantee you we’re not in the black. But it’s not about that.”
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
