IAS Affiliates Organize Farm Aid 40 Community Events

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Farm Aid 40's “Week of Farm Aid” programming and pre-festival events are all about people, power and place. 

Several Institute for Advanced Study Affiliates from across the University of Minnesota have worked to organize numerous Farm Aid 40 Community Events in partnership with the IAS at various University and community venues. We hope you join us!

View all Farm Aid 40 Community Events

Lessons in Mobilizing: From the Farmer Labor Movement to the Tractorcades to Today

Screening of The Farmer-Labor Movement: A Minnesota Story and world premiere of Tractorcade USA, with music by folk singer Larry Long, moderated by Cory Haala.

  • Location: Best Buy Theater, Northrop, 84 Church St SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455
  • When: Tuesday, September 16, 4:00 pm
  • Cost: Free

In this special event, we are screening two films that chronicle the origins of today’s family farm movement. The first film tells the story of the Farmer-Labor movement, which founded the most successful third-party in U.S. political history. The grassroots coalition fought for social and economic equality, supporting protests, strikes and fair prices for farmers’ produce. This progressive movement advanced political change in Minnesota and elected state and national leaders from 1917 until it merged with the Democrats in 1944, to form the DFL, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

The documentary follows the ways farmers and workers overcame urban/rural and ethnic divisions to challenge the inequities and the commercial and political powers of their day. The movement established union bargaining rights, saved farms from foreclosure and founded state parks, leaving Minnesota a lasting progressive legacy.

The second film documents the historic farmers’ tractorcade to Washington DC for parity in 1979. Thousands of farmers from across the United States drove their tractors from their homes and farms all the way to Washington, D.C., with some traveling thousands of miles, often at no more than 15 miles per hour.

Organized by the American Agriculture Movement in a time of economic crisis,, the Tractorcade highlighted the struggles of small family farmers facing mounting debt, foreclosures, and unfair agricultural policies. Convoys of tractors slowly made their way from rural America to the nation’s capital, making headlines and bringing national attention to the farm crisis.

The directors of both films will be on hand for a post-screening discussion, moderated by historian Cory Haala and others, with music from the Troubadour of the Tractorcade, Larry Long.

  • The Farmer Labor Movement: A Minnesota Story (56 min)
    Produced and directed by Randy Croce, Anna Kurhajec, and Tom O’Connell
  • Tractorcade USA (30 min)
    Produced & directed by Larry Long

Black Food Politics, History and Transformation: Reimagining Food Systems from Below

Roundtable Conversation with Angela Dawson, Dominique Hazzard and Zoe Hollomon, moderated by Tracey Deutsch

The roundtable session centers the energy, deep history, and significance of Black activism around food and farming. We bring together Zoe Hollomon and her work with Rootsprings, a Black & LGBT-owned Co-operative farm in Annandale, MN and the Midwest Farmers of Color Collective, especially its advocacy work in policy making and organizing work to fight oppression, and Dominique Hazzard, a new faculty member in the Department of African American & African Studies at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, whose work focuses on the local struggle for Black food sovereignty in Washington, D.C., then and now. The goal of this session is to build connections between the UMN Twin Cities campus and concrete grassroots work being done by Black organizers and visionaries. Together, we are interested in learning how to reimagine food politics from below. This roundtable will be moderated by Tracey Deutsch, a faculty member in the Department of History at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.

Collective Power in the Countryside: A Conversation

Roundtable Conversation with Sarah Smarsh and Sarah Vogel, moderated by Sonja Trom Eayrs

This blockbuster literary event brings together three of rural America’s most insightful and articulate writers: Sarah Smarsh, Sarah Vogel, and Sonja Trom Eayrs. At a time when policy makers and the mainstream media alike so often portray rural Americans in simplistic, cartoonish terms, the subtlety and nuance and variety of the American rural experience is too frequently hidden from view. With this conversation, we aim to offer a corrective, including, most importantly, a sense of how collective power has been built in the countryside in the past and may yet be built again in our own time. All three authors will be signing their books, which will be available for purchase, following the discussion.

This event is made possible thanks to financial support from CFANS Office of Undergraduate Programs, The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), and the Departments of History, American Studies, and Anthropology at the The University of Minnesota

Farm Aid Presents Rissi Palmer’s Color Me Country Takeover

Together, we’ll honor the legacy of BIPOC artists and farmers and lift up the lasting influence on roots music, culture and community that inspires us all!

Amplifying Inclusion: A Conversation with Rissi Palmer of Color Me Country Radio

Roundtable Conversation with Rissi Palmer, Sumanth Gopinath and Yolanda Williams, moderated by Patrick Warfield

The roundtable features Rissi Palmer, the Black woman country artist and host of Color Me Country Radio, Rissi has been making waves in mainstream country music since the 2007 single “Country Girl” received national attention. Her most recent work is Revival, released in 2019, after which she launched Color Me Country Radio in 2020. Sumanth Gopinath (School of Music), is a member of the band The Gated Community, and Yolanda Williams (African American & African Studies), is an opera singer and performer who works across classical, jazz, blues, and gospel genres. They will be in a conversation with Rissi Palmer to explore her artistry, lifework, and key interventions in amplifying inclusion in country music. The roundtable will be moderated by Patrick Warfield, Professor and Director of the School of Music at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.

About Farm Aid

We bring together farmers and communities to build over our shared connection to food, land, culture, climate and story. We lift up those too often left out of the food system, knowing that real, sustainable change starts with those who do the work to put fresh, local food on our tables. This week we celebrate 40 years of fellowship and fierce activism and our motivation to continue the fight!

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