Farm Aid's board of directors — including Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young, Dave Matthews and Margo Price — appointed Charlotte Ammons and Jennifer Fachy to lead the non-profit January 1st.
The annual Farm Aid festival, the music industry's longest-running concert for a cause, began in 1985 and has raised more than $80 million to support programs that help family farmers thrive. Over the decades, he has taken action to change the nation's dominant system of industrial agriculture and promote food from family farms.
Ammons and Fahy make it Carolyn MuggarFarm Aid's first and only executive director, hand-picked for the role by Nelson when he launched the organization. He will continue to work as a Farm Aid consultant. In addition, Deputy Director of Farm Aid Glenda Yoder he is leaving the organization at the end of 2024 after 34 years. Yoder was responsible for starting Farm Aid's Homegrown Concessions, proving that food from the family farm could feed concertgoers on a massive scale.
Fahy joined Farm Aid in 2002 and has served as director of communications since 2008, while Ammons has served as the organization's program director since 2022. Together, they will share leadership responsibilities in the ongoing mission to cultivate a family farm system in America .
“There wouldn't be 40 years of Farm Aid without Carolyn Mugar – and for all those years she made me look good!” Nelson said in a statement. “I am deeply grateful for her passion and commitment to leading Farm Aid's work, listening to farmers and always championing grassroots organisations. Carolyn and Glenda brought together the Good Food movement to bring people together to support farmers.”
Mugar was recognized by Bulletin board on the 2020 Women in Music list. At the time, he noted that in the years since Farm Aid's first concert in 1985, “what has changed is people's consciousness”. Farm Aid supporters have recognized the links between its mission and “the good food movement, the environmental movement, the whole issue of structural racism,” he said. “Farm Aid has been working with black farmers and black farming organizations since day one.”
From barns to behind-the-scenes trailers, Mugar has networked relentlessly on behalf of family farmers, pastoral artists and activists “like a collie dog,” she joked at the time. But inevitably, he's deflected and credited Farm Aid's lasting impact to its leading artists: Nelson, Young, Mellencamp, Matthews and Price. “For all practical purposes, they lead Farm Aid — and they take no prisoners. They really never give up,” he said at the time.
In a statement announcing her succession, Mugar said: “All of us at Farm Aid are confident that Shorlette and Jennifer are ready to lead Farm Aid's next chapter for the benefit of farmers, eaters and the soil and our water. We are facing urgent issues with the health of our planet and I am grateful that Farm Aid has a strong foundation for the next leaders to build on.”
In addition to her deep experience managing communications for Farm Aid and co-producing its annual festival, Fahy holds a certificate in nonprofit management from Boston University's Questrom School of Business. Ammons, who comes from a farming family in North Carolina, spent her pre-Farm Aid career addressing the systemic barriers facing BIPOC, low-income, and rural food and farming communities. He has 20 years of experience in community leadership, training, education and engagement.
“My two-decade career at Farm Aid has given me incredible opportunities to dig into a wide range of the organisation's work and operations, for which I am grateful and proud,” says Fahy. “Farm Aid's people are its greatest strength and I'm excited to deepen my work with all the people – from farmers and artists to our advocates, supporters, politicians and everyone who eats – who make up this organization and this movement for a prosperous farming family.”
“As a black Southern woman raised in the tradition of the family farm, I have a deep understanding of the struggles of family farmers and rural communities,” says Ammons. “I know the ways that food and music bring people together. So, for me, that transition took place over the course of my life of work and service. I am excited to step into this role to build on Farm Aid's legacy of leadership and the resistance that marginalized communities have shown since the farm crisis of the 1980s and throughout our shared history.”
Farm Aid will hold its 40th anniversary festival in 2025. The venue and date of next year's concert are yet to be announced.
