The Funding Field
The Funding Field from Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders (SAFSF) offers insightful conversations with diverse capital partners working to fund and build a resilient, just, and democratic future of food and agriculture. Each episode features candid conversations with leaders in philanthropy, impact investment, and social change who are mobilizing capital, shifting power, and changing systems from the ground up. From on-the-ground insights by frontline communities to trendlines in impact capital and funding food and agriculture, The Funding Field is an essential resource for those seeking greater impact in supporting transformative food systems change.
Episode 1: Shorlette Ammons, Farm Aid
We sat down with Shorlette Ammons, Co-Executive Director and Program Director of Farm Aid, to learn about her journey growing up in rural North Carolina to now leading the nation’s largest musician-led fundraiser to support family farms. Shorlette Ammons brings a rare combination of lived experience and visionary leadership to her work at the intersection of food, music, and movement. Raised in Beautancus, North Carolina, as the granddaughter of hog farmers and the child of farmworkers, Shorlette traces a direct line from those tobacco fields and pickle plant packing lines to her understanding of how systems are designed to pit marginalized communities against one another — and how to build something different.
In conversation with SAFSF’s Clare Fox, Shorlette reflects on Farm Aid’s evolution from iconic telethon concert to year-round advocacy and grantmaking organization, shares a grounded perspective on what philanthropy often misses in its approach to rural and BIPOC communities, and shares invaluable insights for how to get the most out of our time together at the SAFSF Forum in the South.
Farm Aid is a nonprofit organization founded in 1985 by Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp to support American family farmers facing an economic crisis that was driving mass foreclosures and rural displacement. Today, Farm Aid combines an annual benefit concert with year-round advocacy, a farmer hotline, and grantmaking to organizations working on food and farm policy, helping to keep family farmers on the land and build a more resilient, farmer-centered food system. Farm Aid has been a grantmaking member of SAFSF for 20 years, and currently deploys more than $1 million in grants directly to farmers every year.
Show Notes:
Organizations Mentioned in the Episode:
- Farm Aid (SAFSF member!)
- Federation of Southern Cooperatives
- Land Loss Protection Project
- Liberating Investment in the Food and Farm Ecosystem (LIFE) (SAFSF member!)
- National Black Food & Justice Alliance (NBFJA)
- Operation Spring Plant
- RAFI-USA (SAFSF member!)
- Rural Coalition
- Southeastern African-American Farmers Organic Network (SAAFON)
Are you a funder deploying grants, loans, and/or investments in sustainable agriculture and food systems? SAFSF is the leading and largest organization of diverse capital partners investing in food and agriculture with a community of over 120 member organizations.