By: The Kitchen Sisters
Publication: National Public Radio
Published: 11/23/2006
Twenty-one years ago, Willie Nelson joined with his friends Neil Young and John Mellencamp to create a benefit concert to raise money for family farmers and to draw attention to the staggering farm crisis going on in America. Farm foreclosures, small farmers forced to sell out to developers and factory farms, a farm bill that favored corporate agriculture and offered little help to struggling family farmers. There were a lot of suicides in the farming community that were going largely unreported, a lot of farmers that had nowhere to turn. One of the first things Farm Aid did with the $10 million it raised at that first concert was join with farm organizations across America to set up hotlines farmers could call for counseling and emergency aid. Those hotlines are still ringing.
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