Farm Aid 2024: Farmer Heroes Reflect Food, Demographic Diversity
Inspiring and Moving Stories Shared at Farm Aid News Conference
Earlier this week, Local Food Forum published the first part of my recap of the news conference that preceded the Farm Aid Festival, held in Saratoga Springs, New York on September 21.
That article focused on commentary by Farm Aid leaders, including the five music legends — co-founders Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp, along with Dave Matthews — who serve on the non-profit organization’s Board. It was great to share their passion for their very important cause.
But for me, and hopefully for other Local Food Forum leaders, the more impactful portions of the event were the inspiring and often moving stories of the farmers from the host state who were chosen by the Farm Aid team as its "Farmer Heroes.” This second article, linked here, introduces you to this highly diverse group of farmers, who described the challenges, successes, joys and meaningfulness of their work.
If you are a Local Food Forum subscriber, it’s almost a given that you have a huge amount of respect for the farmers we’ve written about, most of whom work in the Chicago region. This is a chance for you to meet farmers who live far away, but have so much in common with our Chicago food community.
I Got Sunshine (and Local Produce) on a Cloudy Day
The last Saturday of September dawned cloudy. It was breezy but fortunately just a drizzle of rain from the remnants of monster Hurricane Helene that are creating inland havoc to our south.
Knowing that gloomy weather days are when our farmer-vendors need us most, I darted out early this morning to do a quick farmers market sweep. It wasn't a photogenic morning so I'm just cutting to the chase with my Green City Market haul photo.
While we clearly are in the transition from the peak season crops to autumn, you can see in the above photo that my haul was still more summer than fall. Gotta get it while you can, which explains why I currently have so much zucchini in the fridge.
Click below and check out my last September market haul.