Willie Nelson bringing Farm Aid to SPAC on Sept. 21 with Neil Young, Dave Matthews

PHOTOGRAPHER: Gazette Staff Report

Farm Aid announced this morning that its annual benefit concert will return to the Northeast on Saturday, Sept. 21, for a show Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

“In New York and across the Northeast, family farmers are pioneering change in our farm and food system. This region has strong agricultural roots and offers fertile ground for new farmers and sustainable agriculture,” Farm Aid President Willie Nelson said in a statement. “On the Farm Aid stage in September, we’ll celebrate the hard work of family farmers and support their efforts to grow strong and healthy communities for all of us.”

Farm Aid 2013 will feature Farm Aid board members Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young and Dave Matthews. Additional artists will be announced soon. The concert benefits and promotes Farm Aid’s mission to keep family farmers on the land, strengthen and revitalize America’s food system, and support the growth of the Good Food Movement — the growing number of people seeking local, organic, humanely raised and family farm-identified food.

Farm Aid 2013 will be an all-day music and food festival featuring a unique mashup of artists and genres on the stage and serving concert-goers family farm-identified, local and organic foods with its own HOMEGROWN Concessions. In Farm Aid’s HOMEGROWN Village, concertgoers will have the chance to meet farmers, engage in hands-on food and farm activities, and learn about the ways family farmers are enriching our soil, protecting our water and growing our economy, in addition to bringing us good food for good health.