Farm Aid coming to Camden

One year after hosting the Live 8 extravaganza, the Philadelphia area will play host to another charity concert event.

Farm Aid, a concert that raises money to benefit America's farmers, is coming to the Tweeter Center in Camden, N.J. in the fall.

This year's show is the 21st annual and is scheduled to occur on September 30.

The Farm Aid concert series began in 1985 when Neil Young, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp developed the idea after the original Live Aid concert.

Since then, the three founding members have continued touring with each year, and were joined on the board of directors in 2001 by singer Dave Matthews.

Mark Smith, the campaign director of Farm Aid said that the whole Delaware Valley region was attractive to concert organizers because of the area's focus on locally produced food.

"Philadelphia is one of the leaders of bringing locally produced food to urban consumers," Smith said.

Although this is the first time Farm Aid will be held in the Philadelphia region, the organizers have worked with Pennsylvania farmers in the past.

In September 2002, the concert was held in Burgettstown, Pa., which is in the Pittsburgh area.

"We developed very good relationships with Pennsylvania family farm associations," Smith said of the 2002 show.

Farm Aid organizers have worked with groups such as the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture to promote their goals in the region.

Jackie Bonomo, the executive assistant for PASA, said that buying locally produced food provides many benefits to the community and said that the Farm Aid concert will provide great exposure for area issues.

"If you buy local, you're supporting your family farmer," she said. "Money stays within the community, building the local economy instead of the long-distance economy."

Consumers can benefit by buying fresher food, and farmers can "get feedback from the people they're growing for."

Bonomo also said that the concert will be a great help to area farmers.

"It's really hard to make it in farming these days," Bonomo said. "The cost of food is low for the quality we have. Farm Aid supports farmers that are in distress."

Penn Political Science professor Mary Summers, who teaches a course on the politics of food, said the region is a great choice for the concert.

"Philadelphia is an interesting city for them," Summers said. "It's close enough to a lot of sources for local food, and yet in your average grocery store most food is brought in from California, Florida or even globally."

Summers said that before World War II, most food sold in Philadelphia came from local farms, and many groups today are working to bring back that trend.

Groups such as Fair Food and FarmEcology, which is a Penn student group founded two of Summers' students, work on promoting local food in the city.

Fair Food, which is part of the White Dog Cafe Foundation, runs a program called Buy Fresh, Buy Local and operates a farm stand at the Reading Terminal Market.

The group also works with area restaurants to bring fresh food into the Philadelphia marketplace.

Summers said that Pennsylvania is "an interesting state to see to what extent we can reinstitute a local food economy."

Although these groups have already had great success in their efforts over the past few years, the concert should still help to make these efforts known to the greater public.

According to Smith, that is indeed one of the main things Farm Aid seeks to achieve.

The goal of the concert is "to shine a spotlight on the positive stuff happening in the Philadelphia area," he said.

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