Claim OwnershipAgainst the Grain: The Farm Aid Podcast
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© 2026 Against the Grain: The Farm Aid Podcast
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“Against the Grain” is the Farm Aid podcast, designed to bring the magic of Farm Aid’s annual festival to listeners year-round. Listeners will hear from artists and farmers, advocates and food experts, activists, and policymakers–all of whom are working towards building a more just and equitable farm and food system. Farm Aid’s Jessica Ilyse Kurn and Michael Stewart Foley will take you all over the country, from Farm Aid’s backstage to rural and urban farms and farmers’ markets. There, you’ll meet citizens fighting the industrial agriculture giants, holding the government accountable, and shifting the culture towards a food and farm model that is better for farmers, the planet and for all of us. This season, in our series Artists and Activism, we’ll talk to more than two dozen artists who are using their art and their voices as vehicles for political engagement and expression on issues that matter to them – and to all of us.
Learn more at www.farmaid.org/podcast
25 Episodes
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Live from Farm Aid 40: Policymakers talk about the current farm crisis In this episode, we take you back to Farm Aid 40 in Minneapolis, where we spoke to some of the state's leading policymakers about issues facing farmers in the current crisis and about how to get a Farm Bill passed. Our colleague, Hannah Tremblay, Farm Aid's Policy and Advocacy Manager, helps frame our conversation by discussing the state of the Farm Bill and what's happening in farm country right now. We then talk to...
In this final episode of Against the Grain's Artists & Activism series, we take you back to Luck Reunion where we recorded a panel conversation in front of a live audience. This panel had four artists who lived through various climate disasters and have been working to sustain their communities in the aftermath. Listen in as we talk to Farm Aid board artist Margo Price, JJ Tourville, Matthew Logan Vasquez and Tommy Newport, followed by a brilliant question and answer session with the audi...
In this penultimate episode of Against the Grain's series on Artists and Activism, we get personal - as in "the personal is political." We talk to Waylon Payne, Allison Russell and Hunter Park (who performs as She Returns from War) about how their personal lives (and, really, all of our personal lives) are political and politicized, even if we're not the ones framing them that way. For Waylon, Allison and Hunter, "the personal is political" has led each to seek their own "chosen family"...
In this episode of Against the Grain’s series on artists & activism, we talk to Lukas Nelson, Micah Nelson and Allison Russell about their experiences with climate change at home and on the road, and what artists — and all of us — can do about it. For 40 years, Farm Aid has stood with family farmers against corporate power, bad policies and climate disasters. As Farm Aid Founder and President Willie Nelson says: “Family farmers aren’t backing down, and neither are we.” Join us for Farm Ai...
In this episode of Against the Grain's series on artists and activism, we zero in on artists catching flak for taking a public stand. We'll hear from Allison Russell, Grace Bowers, Emily Nenni and Dylan LeBlanc. Taylor Swift gets a special mention, and not just for the title of the episode! Farm Aid 40 will be at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Saturday, September 20th. Tickets are still available! farmaid.org/podcast/ for details
In this third episode of Against the Grain's series on Artists and Activism, we talk to artists who come from farming backgrounds and have joined Farm Aid over the years to stand up for family farmers. We hear first from the legendary bluesman, Taj Mahal, who grew up picking tobacco and working on a dairy farm in Massachusetts before studying animal husbandry and agronomy in college. Like Taj, the other artists we talked to for this episode - Cassandra Lewis, Waylon Payne and Charley Crockett...
In this 2nd episode of Against the Grain's series on Artists and Activism, we talk to artists using their storytelling skills and platforms to engage with important social and political issues. You'll hear from Farm Aid board artist Margo Price, Kyshona and Tami Neilson; as well as Steve Duncombe, co-founder of the Center for Artistic Activism.
In this first episode of Against the Grain's new series, Artists and Activism, we focus on the American folk music tradition. Music journalist Dorian Lynskey provides valuable historical context. He reminds us that music and politics have mixed from the beginning - even before the dawn of recorded sound - but that its folk musicians who popularized activist song and the trend of showing up in solidarity with those fighting oppression. We talk to folk musicians Steve Earle, Rainbow Girls, Tré ...
Against the Grain is the Farm Aid podcast, designed to bring the magic of Farm Aid’s annual festival to listeners year-round. This season, in our series Artists and Activism, we'll talk to more than two dozen artists who are using their art and their voices as vehicles for political engagement and expression on issues that matter to them - and to all of us.
In this episode of Against the Grain, join us backstage at Farm Aid 2024 in Saratoga Springs, New York, for an interview with Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones. Farm Aid Board Artist Margo Price invited Representative Jones to join us in Saratoga Springs, and we caught up with him after he and Margo returned from a panel in the HOMEGROWN Village. You may know Representative Jones already. He's one of the two Tennessee state representatives expelled from the House during a debate ove...
In this special episode of Against the Grain, we dig into our recently digitized archives to highlight Farm Aid's awe-inspiring founder and president, Willie Nelson. You may remember that we discussed how the first Farm Aid concert came together in the first episode of the podcast, but in this episode, we highlight the range of work Willie has done for the family farm movement outside of the annual festival. Year-in and year-out, for forty years, Willie has shown up to work shoulder-to-should...
In this episode of Against the Grain, we take you to the FarmYard Stage at Farm Aid 2024 in Saratoga Springs, New York. There we made our first recording of an Against the Grain episode in front of a live audience, under the big tent out in Farm Aid's HOMEGROWN Village. Every year at Farm Aid, farmers and artists come together on the FarmYard Stage to talk about pressing farm and food issues. The Against the Grain panel discussion featured two rockstar farmers, Hope LaBonty of Loving Earth Co...
In the midst of this election season, the shocking devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton seemed to get attention from the candidates only briefly. Media coverage, meanwhile, has tended to focus on the bigger population centers, while the destruction to family farms and the food systems of which they are a part is barely mentioned. And yet, according to USDA estimates, crop losses alone could trigger seven billion dollars in insurance payouts, while the Associated Press reports da...
On this episode of Against the Grain, we’re bringing you as close as possible to an actual taste of the Farm Aid festival... We're talking about the mind-blowing, family farm food that festivalgoers eat each year at Farm Aid! Our guests are Farm Aid's Associate Director, Glenda Yoder and our Culinary Director, Sonya Dagovitz who, together, established HOMEGROWN Concessions® in 2007. As Farm Aid moves around the country every year, they swap out the food normally served at the venue for food s...
As we heard throughout the first season of Against the Grain, American farmers have historically struggled to get the United States Department of Agriculture to listen to, and address their most pressing concerns. That was certainly true when Farm Aid was founded in the midst of the 1980s farm crisis when farmers were pushed off their land due to loan foreclosures. We've also heard that there's a range of reasons why farmers - particularly farmers of color and Tribal producers - feel a sense ...
Food desert is a term that is used in reference to the absence of good quality, nutritious food in a particular geographic area. But as Chef Bleu Adams of Indigehub says in this episode of Against the Grain, a more appropriate term is "food apartheid" because there's nothing natural about the absence of good food for Native Americans. For Tribal producers and eaters, the legacy of colonization and land theft carries on in the structures of food apartheid on what is, ostensibly, tribal land. A...
As Farm Aid artist Micah Nelson says, "the soil is the most fundamental source of life." When Micah and his family were riding out the pandemic at their ranch in Luck, Texas, they decided to start growing their own food. But as anyone who lives in Texas Hill Country can tell you, it is rough, rugged terrain, frequently distinguished by densely packed, seemingly inhospitable earth. Fortunately, Micah's mother, Farm Aid board member Annie Nelson, encountered Tina and Orion Weldon at the farmers...
We just got back from Luck Reunion, a music festival held on Farm Aid president Willie Nelson's ranch every March. There, we got to interview a lot of artists, farmers, and chefs. In this special bonus episode, you'll hear from superstar chef Rick Bayless, who traveled to Luck from Chicago. Rick recounts how, years ago, when he lived in Mexico, he noticed that no matter where he traveled, if folks had a really strong local agricultural economy, the food in the restaurants an...
How do farmers lose land? As Kenya Crumel of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance says, it's not like losing a set of keys: "Nobody's just accidentally losing land." Rather, she explains land has been taken – specifically from Black farmers – through a variety of means over the last century. The decline is staggering! In the 1920s Black farmers held somewhere between 15 and 19 million acres of land and represented 14% of all American farmers. Today, Black farmers represent 1% of all A...
As Farm Aid board artist Dave Matthews says, “the vast majority of people are good, the vast majority of people are community driven and want to take care of each other,” and understanding that fact can motivate us to change the farm and food systems that prioritize corporate profits over communities. In this second episode of Against the Grain, called “Hoodwinked,” you’ll hear from artists Dave Matthews and Allison Russell, former contract poultry farmer and whistleblower Craig Watts, and or...
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