Farm Aid co-founder John Mellencamp will join farmers, ranchers and farmworkers from across the U.S. on Tuesday (March 7) when they descent on Washington, D.C. for the Rally for Resilience: Farmers for Climate Action. According to a release from Farm Aid, the march is intended to send a signal to Congress to make climate change a policy priority as lawmakers begin work on the 2023 Farm Bill.
“As a Farm Aid board member, I’ve been to Washington a few times to ask for farmer voices to be heard. I hope on March 7, members of Congress hear farmers and ranchers loud and clear,” said Mellencamp in a statement. “If we want a better world, it starts with us. Farmers know this. They have the tools and know-how to better our climate future, but they can’t do it alone. Policymakers — and all of us — need to support the solutions they can deliver.”
Indiana-bred Mellencamp is slated to speak and perform at the rally on Freedom Plaza, where farmers will share their personal stories about how climate change has affected their crops and communities, as well as offer insight into how sustainable agricultural practices such as organic production and rotational grazing can help mitigate the effects of the climate crisis. The release also noted that speakers will encourage Congress to include support for Black, Indigenous and people of color producers in the upcoming Farm Bill.
Click here for more information on the Rally for Resistance.
Mellencamp revealed his plans to attend the event in September before last year’s annual Farm Aid benefit. “[Willie Nelson] and I made the effort” to testify before a Congressional subcommittee in the 1980s on behalf of family farmers. And he left convinced that “the government … doesn’t care about you, doesn’t care about anything but greed,” Mellencamp said of his and fellow Farm Aid co-founder Nelson’s longstanding efforts to get officials in Washington to pay attention to the precarious plight of the nation’s farmers.
“So it’s going to take good people like you,” Mellencamp told the audience of farmers and activists at the pre-concert event. “I’m going to come to Washington, D.C., because politics today in the United States has gotten so far out of hand. We’ll get a school bus and we’ll all go down together.”
