Ain't That America? The 1985 Farm Aid Concert as New Agrarianism

In its broadest sense, this paper explorers the disconnect between rural politics and culture in the United States since the 1960s. This is a period generally understood by the public and scholars alike as embodying the death of the family farm, the rise of agribunsiness supremacy, and the decline of the small town values associated with the Heartland for a century. In 1985, 80,000 people converged on a football stadium in southern Illinois to fight these changes. Organized by three famous and successful popular musicians, Farm Aid set out to raise money for struggling family farmers. It certainly accomplished that goal--to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars--but it also disrupted Americans' public debates about rural culture. Farm Aid is part of a larger cultural scene that celebrated a reconfigured rural America as a place with farmers and hard work, but less farming. My paper will explore the public political debate that surrounded this concert with an eye toward determining how it shaped, and was shaped by, the changing economic and political realities of the rural Midwest and South.