Here's Why Willie Nelson is Always On Our Minds

In 1999, just a few days after I started my freshman year of college, I drove from my new home in Tulsa to Kansas City. My hair was braided into pigtails. I had a red bandana at the ready. If memory serves, and to firmly cement the cliché, “On the Road Again” was blaring from my radio. I was going to see Willie Nelson in concert, and I wanted all the details just right.

Writer and editor extraordinaire Jason Woods interviews Willie Nelson in August 2018

Twenty years later, I’m still a fangirl of Willie’s, albeit a more reserved one. And now, thanks to my colleague, Jason, I get to fangirl in a totally different and somewhat more mature way. Why? Because our upcoming holiday issue of World Ark magazine features an interview with the Redheaded Stranger himself.

So, why did we interview Willie? What exactly do Heifer and Willie Nelson have in common other than I’m a fan of both?

A lot more than you’d think.

Among the myriad things Willie is known for, advocating for family farmers nears the top of the list. The story goes that while onstage during the 1985 Live Aid benefit, Bob Dylan planted the seed that family farmers here in the United States needed help, too. Willie and a few other artists took the idea and ran with it, creating the first Farm Aid benefit. (For the younger millennials, Live Aid was a benefit for Ethiopia, which had been dealing with widespread famine.)

Without going into too much detail (you can find all of that at Farm Aid’s fascinating site) the 1980s had been tough for farmers. So the idea was to raise money for family farmers and connect concert-goers to the people who toiled tirelessly to produce their food. After 30 years, Farm Aid has grown, expanded and works, "each and every day, year-round to build a system of agriculture that values family farmers, good food, soil and water, and strong communities."

This year's Farm Aid festival will stream live from 3 p.m. – 11 p.m. Eastern time on September 22

If that last part sounds familiar, good. Because to us, it sounded a lot like what our team at Heifer USA does: Help rural communities lift themselves out of poverty through farming, support the local food movement and sustainable farming and increase the income of small farms by building marketing connections and farmer cooperatives.

Here’s a little more about Farm Aid’s history, how their work parallels our work in Heifer USA and how much Willie Nelson has influenced family farming over the years.

• Farm Aid is the longest running benefit concert series in America. This year, the festival marks its 33^rd year, though it did skip 1988. Willie and friends more than made up for the one show by taking Farm Aid on in the road for 16 shows in 1989.
• Farm Aid has raised more than $53 million for family farmers and distributed more than $22 million in grants to organizations that work directly with the people who produce our food.
• Willie Nelson has directly impacted United States policy that protects family farms. He was instrumental in convincing Congress to pass the Agricultural Credit Act in 1987, and Farm Aid has helped famers save their farms from foreclosure due to natural disasters. Farm Aid also help set the Organic Foods Production Act, which established the regulations for organic growers.
• Just like Heifer USA brings farmers together in cooperatives, Farm Aid has helped farmers link together in times of crisis. Farmers have donated hay to other farmers during extreme droughts when livestock were at risk.

Heifer is proud to work alongside Willie Nelson on this mission to support small-scale sustainable farmers on the United States. I’m still trying to contain my excitement that we can even write that sentence (Willie Nelson!)

You can learn more about Nelson’s advocacy for farmers in the holiday issue of World Ark, which will be online and in mailboxes next month.