Bob Dylan to perform at Farm Aid festival this weekend

The politics of farming are growing more contentious, as age-old challenges collide with worsening extreme weather, climate change, and volatile markets shaped by trade wars and tariffs.

(CNN) — Bob Dylan will perform at the annual Farm Aid festival this Saturday, announced the organization, which raises funds to help farmers in need.

He’ll be among a number of stars at the music festival, including Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews and more. He last played at Farm Aid in 2023.

The festival is the primary source of funding to support “year-round work with and for family farmers,” according to its website.

Since 1985, Farm Aid has raised more than $85 million to support programs that help farmers, according to the organization’s press release.

Dylan, whose songs famously tackled social issues such as inequality and war, has always been part of the DNA of Farm Aid. The festival’s origins date back to a quip Dylan made at a Live Aid benefit concert.

At the time, Ethiopia was stricken by drought, prompting a movement to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for relief – backed by stars like Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson.

While on stage, Dylan used the opportunity to highlight an ongoing crisis within the US.

“I hope that some of the money that’s raised for the people in Africa,” Dylan said. “Maybe they can just take a little bit of it, one or two million, and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms that the farmers here owe to the banks.”

Crop prices were crashing in 1985, with bank foreclosures wiping out family farms at alarming rates and pushing farmer suicides to record levels. When Dylan gave a shoutout to those who grow the food that ends famines, it struck Nelson – a former cotton-picker turned country superstar.

Before long, Nelson was on the phone with Young and Mellencamp, and Farm Aid was born. With a handful of exceptions, it’s been held annually ever since.

The politics around farming are even more contentious these days, with age-old problems remaining and new ones getting worse – including extreme weather that’s becoming increasingly unpredictable thanks to climate change, and a volatile market subject to trade wars and tariffs.

CNN will be the exclusive television broadcast partner of Farm Aid 40, which is scheduled for September 20 at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

CNN Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir will provide on-the-ground reporting, while John Berman and Laura Coates will co-anchor the coverage.

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