2021 Farm Aid Hartford

Farm Aid’s annual festival — a full day of music, family farmers, food, agrarian experiences — is returning to Hartford, Connecticut, this year live and in-person on Saturday, Sept. 25, at Xfinity Theatre. After hosting a virtual festival in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Farm Aid 2021 will reunite family farmers and musician activists, with performances by Farm Aid board members Willie Nelson & Family, John Mellencamp, Neil Young, Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, and Margo Price, as well as Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Bettye LaVette, Jamey Johnson, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Allison Russell, Particle Kid, and Ian Mellencamp.

“The experience of the past 18 months has reminded us how much we need each other,” said Farm Aid President and Founder Willie Nelson. “I’m so glad that music is bringing us all back together at Farm Aid 2021 to celebrate family farmers. When we combine music, family farmers and good food, we have the power to grow the kind of agriculture that strengthens all of us.”

New England is home to 32,300 farms across six states ― Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island — with an additional 33,438 farms in New York State. The Northeast is a hotbed for innovative progress in agriculture, including local and regional food systems, organic production, work to advance racial justice in agriculture, and regenerative agriculture methods of the Indigenous Americans who farmed this land first. The Northeast includes some of the top states for new and beginning farmers, as well as female farmers. Challenges of farmers in this region include access to farmland and credit, fair prices (particularly in dairy) and climate change.The silent auction will run at farmaid.org/auction Sept. 25–Oct. 8.

Young boy on a tractor with a rope on the hitch.

Learn by doing – under watchful eyes of course.


For event updates, follow Farm Aid on Twitter (@FarmAid), Facebook (facebook.com/farmaid) and Instagram (instagram.com/farmaid), and visit farmaid.org/festival. Festivalgoers are encouraged to use the hashtags #FarmAid2021 and #Road2FarmAid to join the conversation on social media around this year’s festival. Farm Aid’s mission is to build a vibrant, family farm-centered system of agriculture in America. Farm Aid artists and board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews and Margo Price host an annual festival to raise funds to support Farm Aid’s work with family farmers and to inspire people to choose family farm food. For more than 35 years, Farm Aid, with the support of the artists who contribute their performances each year, has raised more than $60 million to support programs that help farmers thrive, expand the reach of the Good Food Movement, take action to change the dominant system of industrial agriculture and promote food from family farms.