Farm AID's Founder: Willie Nelson

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On the direct emergency aid front, he notes that "it may sound crazy to be giving food to farmers, but the reality is that many of them have a freezer full of meat, but no money to buy bread."

Likewise he has something short and to-the-point to say about Farm Aid's efforts to help farmers take concerted political action. "Well, there are all sorts of factions, just like in any movement," he says. "The trick is to get them all arguing in the same room."'

Which has in fact been done. The Farmers and Ranchers Congress did establish a united 94-resolution platform dealing with issues of credit, imports, exports and foreign policy; conservation and protection of the environment; land ownership and control; rural economic development; tax and fiscal policies; food assistance, quality and safety; education; drought in the Southeast; and the agenda for direct action. The platform was the basis for the current Farm Bill.

Willie notes that some success has also been achieved on the voting front. "The farm areas elected a bunch of new Democrats in last year's congressional elections," he says. "There, Farm Aid didn't take any political positions, but we did advise farmers to check out their representatives, see how they stood on the farm issues and vote 'em out if they didn't like what they saw. We made it clear that the only way to have something good happen for them in the long run was to get something started in Washington.

"Basically, it's not a Republican or Democratic issue," he continues. "Though the Reagan administration is putting American farmers out of business with its policies, it's really a matter of what each candidate's position is. And quite a few incumbents got voted out in the last election. I think that there was a real low voter turnout, and the people who did vote were the people voting against something, people who were mad. In the farm states, those people were farmers."

He smiles. "That's the wave of the future," he says. "There ain't nobody decent to vote for anyway, so let's just vote 'em all out."

Tut, tut. That's the old outlaw talking, the rebel who, back in his Austin sage days, opined that "politicians are about as interesting as meadow grass, and a whole lot harder on the horses."

Even now, Caroline Mugar notes that "he doesn't like politics, not one bit, but that's not how he sees Farm Aid. He just looks on it as helping people. He comes in contact with a lot of country people—that's his audience, after all—so for years he's been hearing and seeing the trouble the farmers are in. When he saw what Live Aid did for Africa, he translated that into his immediate experience, realized he could do something, then just jumped and did it. That's his way."

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