So God Made a Farmer

"So God Made a Farmer" was a speech given by radio broadcaster Paul Harvey at the 1978 Future Farmers of America convention. The speech was first published in 1986 in Harvey's syndicated column. The speech borrowed a few phrases from a 1975 article written by Harvey in the Gadsden Times, which was itself inspired by parts of a 1940 definition of a dirt farmer published in The Farmer-Stockman. The 1940 article was copied verbatim by Tex Smith in a letter to the editor in the Ellensburg Daily Record in 1949. The speech was given as an extension of the Genesis creation narrative referring to God's actions on the 8th day of creation. Harvey described the characteristics of a farmer in each phrase, ending them with the recurring "So God Made a Farmer".

The speech was used in a commercial by Ram Trucks during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLVII. The ad featured photographs of rural America set to a narration of a portion of Harvey's speech. In a collaboration with the FFA, Dodge agreed to donate $100,000 for every 1,000,000 views that the YouTube video of the ad received up to $1,000,000,000. This goal was reached in less than five days. There were eight photographers who participated and photographed the images in this commercial Andy Anderson, Matt Turley, Olaf Veltman, Andy Mahr, Kurt Markus, David Beltra, David Spielman, Mark Gooch, Jim Arndt, William Allard, and Kurt Markus.

Paul Harvey, a radio host who died in 2009, delivered the speech at an FFA convention in 1978. His speech began as a continuation of the Genesis creation narrative referring to the actions God took on the 8th day. In it, Harvey stated that God needed a caretaker for the land he created. The speech continues with God expressing the characteristics needed by the person he is creating:

"I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild; somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to await lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon, and mean it."

...
Wikipedia