NELSON’S FARM AID II GETS ON TRACK TODAY IN TEXAS

With $2.7 million from Farm Aid I still collecting interest in an Illinois bank, Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid organization plans to host the first major sequel to a pop charity mega-event at a horse race track 11 miles east of here today. The humid 90-degree weather appears to be the only obstacle still facing Farm Aid II: The Picnic, the 1986 version of last September’s benefit for the nation’s farmers. A spokesman for the National Weather Service said Thursday that chances of rain in Austin today are less than 20%, though there is a high expected today of 96 degrees.

Farm Aid II very nearly did not happen because of another problem that has plagued mega events recently: liability insurance. Like Hands Across America, which cost its organizers $2.5 million in premiums, Farm Aid II faced far stiffer insurance costs this year.

Premiums for Farm Aid I, which was held on the University of Illinois campus in Champaign, cost about $30,000 of the $9 million in contributions, ticket sales and ad revenue that the concert and simultaneous telethon eventually earned. All told, Farm Aid I cost about $2 million to stage, leaving $7 million to distribute to farm assistance organizations.

In Austin, where organizers expect to take in considerably less than $9 million, the insurance premium is more than $200,000. At one point, Nelson feared he would not be able to secure insurance at any cost to cover the expected audience of 40,000 who are paying $20 apiece to see the all-day concert.

Partially because of the insurance woes, the concert site was moved three times in the past two weeks. Organizers were confident this week that the Fourth of July concert featuring Nelson, John Cougar Mellencamp, the Beach Boys, Neil Young, Rick James and more than 70 other rock, country and soul performers would go on as scheduled. Today’s benefit begins at 8 a.m. (6 a.m. PDT) at Manor Downs race track and lasts “until the last person dies on the stage,” said spokeswoman Barbara Pepe.

Nelson said here Thursday that it would take $230 billion to bail out all the farmers who are in debt. “We cannot give money to a farmer who is $70,000 in debt so that he can just turn over and give the money to the bank, because this only means that next year he has the same problem again. We could only help a few with $9 milllion . . .,” he said, adding, that’s why Farm Aid has given priority to medical, legal and emergency food expenses.

The show is to be staged on behalf of the nation’s farmers who were also the indirect beneficiaries of Farm Aid I. Farm Aid executive director Carolyn Mugar, one of two full-time paid staff members for Farm Aid, said more than $4 million of the revenue from Farm Aid I has been paid out to food banks, legal aid groups, farm crisis hot lines and other projects in 37 states.

The single largest recipient to date is the National Council of Churches, which has received and distributed $935,000, chiefly in the form of $10,000-$20,000 grants that the council has made to state and local farm assistance groups.

In March, for example, the California Association of Family Farmers in Davis received $10,000 in Farm Aid, according to National Council of Churches director for news services Carol Fouke.

By the time the money actually gets to a farm family who will use it for hopusehold fuel, medical bills or emergency groceries, the Farm Aid breaks down to $50, $100 or $200 one-time grants, Fouke said.

“It’s very ironic that those people who produce food for a living need emergency grants to buy a sack of groceries,” said Carol Fouke, a National Council of Churches spokeswoman. “They have a freezer full of peat and no eggs.”