JIm Connors from the University of Idaho is our guest columnist this week. Enjoy!
A few weeks ago millions of people sat down to watch the biggest football game of the year, the Super Bowl. The 2023 Super Bowl was also the 10th anniversary of the now famous “So God Made a Farmer” television commercial by Dodge RAM Trucks. The immortal words and voice of Paul Harvey echoes across the years. But the younger generation of FFA Advisors and members may not know “the rest of the story” of how FFA was a part of this now famous commercial.
Paul Harvey began his radio career in Tusla, Oklahoma. In 1951 he started his nationwide news and comment program on ABC Radio network in Chicago. The Rest of the Story segment began in 1976.
But the story of “So God Made a Farmer” begins 48 years ago in 1975. The August 26, 1975 edition of the Gadsden Times in Gadsden, AL, included a article titled “What it is to be a farmer” by Paul Harvey. The article includes several familiar phrases that will later appear in “So God Made a Farmer.”
Figure 1: What it is to be a farmer – Gadsden Times, Aug. 26, 1975 (Harvey, 1975)
Just four short years after this article in 1978, Paul Harvey was invited to be a keynote speaker at the 51st National FFA Convention in Kansas City, MO. Part of Harvey’s speech was a five paragraph section called “so God made a Farmer.” Both Harvey’s 1975 article and 1978 speech included detailed descriptions of characteristics of farmers. Table 1 below includes similar phrases from both documents.
Figure 2: Paul Harvey speaks at the 51st National FFA Convention in 1978
Table 1
Similar phrases from Paul Harvey’s article and speech
| What it is to be a farmer (Harvey, 1975) | “So God made a farmer” (Harvey, 1978) |
| A farmer can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout and shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire. | I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire… |
| He can make a harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. | …who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks, and shoe scraps… |
| During planting time and harvest season, he finished his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon; then painin’ from tractor – back, he puts in another 72. | A farmer…who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, and then pain’n from tractor back, put in another seventy-two hours. |
The Proceedings of the 51st National FFA Convention includes a one-sentence description of Harvey’s speech – “On Thursday morning, the crowd heard Paul Harvey share his comments on American agriculture and farming” (p. 4)
A transcript and audio recording of Harvey’s “God Made a Farmer” speech at the 1978 National FFA Convention can be found on American Rhetoric webpage at https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/paulharveysogodmadeafarmer.htm
As far as we can tell, Harvey’s speech was then forgotten for the next 35 years. It is not known how the Chrysler company found the audio recording and decided to make it into a Super Bowl television commercial for RAM Trucks. The commercial appeared during the 4th Quarter of the 2013 Super Bowl. The end of the 2:00 minute commercial included the tag line, “To the farmer in all of us” and showed the FFA emblem. The RAM brand declared 2013 the “Year of the Farmer” and urged viewers to “Join the movement. Help the next generation of farmers. Support FFA.” Dodge agreed to donate $100,000 for every 1 million views of the commercial on YouTube up to a maximum of $1 million. The goal was reached in less than five days. Within a few weeks of the commercial appearing it had been viewed by more than 18 million people (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRDaPEaDJ7E).
Shortly after the Super Bowl commercial appeared an article about it appeared in The Atlantic magazine (Franke-Ruta, 2013). The authors described the commercial as, “A Super Bowl advertisement for Ram Trucks featuring excerpts from a Carter-era address to the Future Farmers of America struck a chord with its religious imagery.” The article went on to state, “The speech was originally delivered in 1978, smack dab in the middle of the Carter era, and with its folksy timbre and talk of God, Paul Harvey’s words stood out amid the stream of ads that ranged from salacious to ridiculous….”
The commercial included still photographs of farmers and agricultural scenes. To get the photographs, Chrysler commissioned 10 photographers from National Geographic magazine for a 3-week assignment to take the photographs for the commercial. The photographers took over 100,000 photographs of which 35 core photographs ended up in the commercial. Later In 2013, National Geographic published a book titled “The Farmer in All of Us: An American Portrait.” The book included 240 photographs taken by the team of photographers.
Figure 3: The Farmer in All of Us (National Geographic, 2013)
After the So God Made a Farmer commercial appeared, it didn’t take long before people created additional stories. Two individuals, Davidson and Gray, both created a story titled “So God Made an Ag Teacher.” The first paragraph of these documents are the same. However, the rest of the documents are different. Table 2 below lists four items inspired by Paul Harvey’s speech and Super Bowl commercial.
Table 2
So God Made a…
| Title | Author/Date | Opening |
| So God Made an Ag Teacher | Kassie L. Davidson (2014)
Rylie Gray (n.d.) |
And on the 9th day, after God made a farmer, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need someone to educate people about the land and ways of the world,” So God made an Ag Teacher. |
| So God Made an FFA Member | Macee Hammack (2017) | And on the 9th day, after God made a farmer, he looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a leader. |
| So God Made a Teacher | Amy Breitmann (2013) | And on the 8th day, God looked down on His children, big and small, and said “I need a caretaker.” |
| So God Made a Farmer’s Daughter | KT O’Farrell (2017) | Then, on the 9th day, God looked upon his creation and said, “He needs a shadow.” So God made the farmer’s daughter. |
The Utah FFA Association even made a video from the words of So God Made an Ag Teacher. It can be viewed on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_gG4aWkoao. The Section 19 FFA Officers from the Illinois FFA set the words of So God Made an FFA Member to video. Their video can be viewed at: So God Made An FFA Member – YouTube
Other items inspired by Paul Harvey’s speech include a book, country music song, posters, etc. The book So God Made a Farmer: A Retrospective on The Living Words of Paul Harvey by an Organic Farmer (Lyle, 2021) is available on Amazon.
A country-music song was even inspired by the speech and commercial. In 2013, country-music singer James Wesley released his song Thank a Farmer. One verse of the song even includes the lyrics – A lot of folks like me still care about the FFA and county fairs. You can hear the song on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZkcDTxaRRc
Conclusion
What began as a written opinion by Paul Harvey in 1975 morphed into a speech delivered to agriculture audiences including the 51st National FFA Convention in 1978. But it was the Dodge RAM Truck commercial during the 2013 Super Bowl that transformed the saying “So God Made a Farmer” into a nationwide movement to support agriculture and the farmers who produce our food and fiber every day. And now you know “The Rest of the Story” of the role that FFA played in “So God Made a Farmer.”
References
Davidson, K. L. (2014). So God made an ag teacher. https://www.facebook.com/ccagriculture/posts/so-god-made-an-ag-teacher-by-kassie-l-davidsonand-on-the-ninth-day-after-god-mad/617563764983321/
Frank-Ruta, G. (2013, February 3). Paul Harvey’s 1978 ‘So God Made a Farmer’ Speech. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/paul-harveys-1978-so-god-made-a-farmer-speech/272816/
Future Farmers of America (1978). Proceedings 51st national FFA convention. https://archives.iupui.edu/handle/2450/6593
Hammack, M. (2017). So God made an FFA member. https://www.theodysseyonline.com/so-god-made-ffa-member
Harvey, P. (1975, Aug. 26). What it is to be a farmer. Gadsden Times, p. 4. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=x6cfAAAAIBAJ&pg=940,4348824#:~:text=https%3A//news.google.com/newspapers%3Fid%3Dx6cfAAAAIBAJ%26sjid%3DVtYEAAAAIBAJ%26pg%3D940%252C4348824
Harvey, P. (1978). “God made a farmer” transcript and audio recording. AmericanRhetoric.com. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/paulharveysogodmadeafarmer.htm
Harvey, P (2013). “So God Made a Farmer.” YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRDaPEaDJ7E
National Geographic (2013). The farmer in all of us. Washington, DC.
Roach, E. (2013). ‘So God made a farmer’ Super Bowl ad inspires. https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/so-god-made-a-farmer-super-bowl-ad-inspires/
Section 19 FFA Officers – Illinois FFA. So God Made an FFA Member. YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv0MyUjj_Z4
“So God Made a Farmer” (2022, March 2). RFD-TV Now. https://www.rfdtv.com/so-god-made-a-farmer
So God Made a Farmer. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_God_Made_a_Farmer
Utah FFA Association (n.d.). So God Made an Ag Teacher. YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_gG4aWkoao
Wesley, J. (2013). Thank a Farmer. YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZkcDTxaRRc