Willie Nelson’s ‘At Home With Farm Aid’ Stream Raises Half A Million

Courtesy of Farm Aid – At Home With Farm Aid
Dave Matthews, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young raised more than $500,000 for farmers with April 11’s “At Home With Farm Aid.”

Willie Nelson’s long-running annual Farm Aid benefit went digital on April 11, hosting Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews and Nelson and his sons Lukas and Micah for “At Home With Farm Aid.”

Farm Aid has now detailed the event’s success: Thousands of donors from all 50 states and 15 countries donated more than $500,000 to help farmers and ranchers across the country.

“The time to build a resilient family farm food system is now!” Nelson said in a statement.

According to a press release, funds raised will be directed toward solutions to the coronavirus pandemic, emergency grants for farmers and ranchers, coordination of a national network of experts to provide resources for those farmers, a hotline to support distressed farmers and government advocacy.

“The coronavirus has disrupted our entire country and is a grave threat to all of us,” Willie Nelson said in a statement prior to the event. “One of its many impacts is that it has helped us to better see the value of essential people like healthcare workers, grocery store clerks, delivery truck drivers, and farmers and ranchers.”

Farm Aid was presented with AXS TV, and broadcast on farmaid.org and Nelson and Matthews’ respective SiriusXM channels.

Recent physical iterations of the event have been successful, with the 2017 edition, held at S&T Bank Music Park in Burgettstown, Pa., selling 21,825 tickets and grossing $1.55 million and the 2018 version, held at Xfinity Theatre in Hartford, Conn., moving 22,967 tickets and grossing $1.82 million, according to Pollstar Boxoffice reports.

At Home With Farm Aid wasn’t the first benefit Nelson has led during the coronavirus crisis. After the pandemic forced the cancellation of his annual Luck Reunion last month, the event went digital, raising more than $200,000 for impacted artists.

“Right now is the time to work together versus separately, because there’s so many people doing stuff that you can group up and work together,” Luck co-founder Matt Bizer told Pollstar. “It allows a centralized audience and focuses people, versus hundreds of tiny streams from everybody’s Instagram. Now is the time to band together with those communities that you have.”