(Video above: Dodge’s epic “God made a farmer” Super Bowl feature)
In 1978, legendary broadcaster Paul Harvey delivered an unforgettable speech to the Future Farmers of America Convention titled “God Made a Farmer.” Harvey passed away in 2009, but his remarks have had staying power, resurfacing again recently as Dodge utilized the speech for a stirring feature that aired during the Super Bowl.
The video above will especially hit home here in Alabama, where agriculture is by far the state’s largest industry.
A 2014 report in the Montgomery Advertiser illustrates just how massive farming is in the Yellowhammer State.
What’s produced in the forests and fields of Alabama generates a yearly economic impact of $70.4 billion, making agriculture the state’s largest industry.
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As far as jobs go, agriculture produces 580,295 jobs in the state, with forestry leading the tally at 122,020 direct and support jobs, according to federation figures.
There are more than 48,500 farms in the state, covering 9 million acres, federation data shows. On the forestry side, 22 million acres, or two-thirds of the state, are covered in forest land, according to the Alabama Forestry Commission. That’s good enough to put Alabama third among the 48 contiguous states for timberland total, behind Georgia and Oregon.
Check out the “God made a farmer” video above, or read the transcript below… Then go thank a farmer.
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.” So God made a farmer.
God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” So God made a farmer.
“I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon — and mean it.” So God made a farmer.
God said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’ I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain’n from ‘tractor back,’ put in another seventy-two hours.” So God made a farmer.
God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place. So God made a farmer.
God said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church.
“Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life ‘doing what dad does.'” So God made a farmer.
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