For Country Star Margo Price, Farm Aid's Farmer Cause is Personal

Bob Benenson

2 days ago

2 min read

Illinois-Born Board Member Was a Toddler When Her Family Lost Their Farm

*Country music star Margo Price and her band at Farm Aid 2026 in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Photo by Bob Benenson*

All of Farm Aid's musician Board members voice their strong support and concerns for the family farmers they advocate for. For one of them — country music star Margo Price — the issue is intensely personal: She was born in 1983 as a national farm crisis was deepening, and she was just two years old when her grandfather lost the farm in western Illinois that had been in the family for generations.

Price sang about the traumatic impact of this loss in the song Hands of Time on her 2016 debut album Midwest Farmer's Daughter and made her first Farm Aid appearance the same year. And it was the second song she played in her set at Farm Aid 2026, held at the Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater in Virginia Beach, Virginia:

Times, they were tough growing up at home

My daddy lost the farm when I was two years old

Took a job at the prison working second shift

And that’s the last time I let them take what should be his

Price was invited in 2021 to join the Farm Aid Board by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp — who founded the organization in 1985 — as well as Dave Matthews, who had joined the Board in 2001. Matthews joined Price on stage along with Jesse Welles, whose protest songs have drawn a huge following, for the final song in her set.

Price also paid tribute to the late country music icon Dolly Parton with a cover of 9 to 5.