FARM AID 2007 TO HIT THE BIG APPLE

Farm Aid 2007 is set to hit the big apple’s Randalls Island, and Neil Young explains why it’s important for everyone in the country.

Farm Aid will take over New York City in 2007 on September 9, and it will feature organizers Neil Young, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews. The benefit concert inched towards the big apple last year with a show in Camden, New Jersey, right outside Philadelphia, and it will hit Randall’s Island this year.

For some it may seem strange that a big city in the Northeastern United States would host the festival – considering most food is grown in the Midwest – but at last year’s Farm Aid press conference Neil Young said that food is a critical issue for everyone.

“At all stages from being young to being college graduates, the food that these people eat in their environment where they’re learning is the fuel that they have to think. It really is food for thought. People who eat good food, good healthy food, are not as prone to have A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder) or any of those conditions that they advertise on TV with drugs for them. This is more than let’s teach the kids that good food is good. Let’s enable them by giving them the fuel to make their brains work correctly and have their bodies function so they can absorb the information that we’re trying to impart to them. And then maybe we’ll get some new blood in farming and maybe Willie and I will be here in another forty years and we’ll still be doing this (applause out).”

Farm Aid has raised over 30 million dollars to support programs that help farmers thrive, expand the reach of the Good Food Movement, take action to change the current system of industrial agriculture and promote food from family farms. Tickets for Farm Aid 2007: A HOMEGROWN Festival are on sale June 16 at 10 a.m. EDT.