Paul Harvey so god made a farmer

Paul Harvey Aurandt (born September 4, 1918 in Tulsa, Oklahoma; † 28 February 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona) was an American radio host.

Harvey attended the University of Tulsa in 1933 and worked at local radio station KVOO in Tulsa. Later, he was program director of the station. He later moved to various other stations in Kansas and St. Louis. During World War II he served several months in the United States Air Force. From 1944 he worked for the station WENR in Chicago and in 1951 was his show Paul Harvey News and Comment broadcast on ABC radio for the first time. They only ended with his death in 2009 and was acquired by 1200 Radio stations and 400 channels of the U.S. armed forces. So god made a farmer speech. In 2000 he signed a € 100 million U.S. dollars ten-year contract with ABC Radio.



Harvey was conservative and supported Joseph McCarthy during the McCarthy era in the 1950s. However, he set in 1970 against then-President Richard Nixon, as he in his radio broadcast against the invasion of U.S. troops in Cambodia took place:

"Mr. President, I love you. But you're wrong. "
- Paul Harvey, 1970

In 2005 he was honored by U.S. President George W. Bush with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He died at age 90 in a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona.


Not Paul Harvey. His speech is a little gem of literary craftsmanship. It shows that words still retain the power to move us, even in a relentlessly visual age driven from distraction to distraction.

Harvey picks up the story of creation: “And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker’ — so God made a farmer.” It goes on to describe characteristics of the dutiful farmer, punctuating each riff with the same kicker: “God said, ‘I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk the cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board’ — so God made a farmer.”

In its pacing and its imagery, the speech is a kind of prose-poem. Delivered by Harvey, who could make a pitch for laundry detergent sound like a passage from the King James Bible, it packs great rhetorical force. Listening to it can make someone who never would want to touch cows, especially before dawn, wonder why he didn’t have the good fortune to have to milk them twice a day. In short, it is a memorably compelling performance, and without bells or whistles, let alone staging so elaborate it might challenge the logisticians who pulled off the invasion of Normandy.


One of the most memorable commercials of the 2013 Super Bowl was Ram Trucks' "Farmer," a simple slideshow of photographs accompanied by a stirring tribute to America's farmers that featured the recurring phrase, "So God made 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 to get up before dawn and milk cows and 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 strong arms. Strong enough to rustle a calf, yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry and have to wait for lunch until his wife is done feeding and visiting with the ladies and telling them to be sure to come back real soon...and mean it. So, God made a farmer.

God said "I need somebody that can shape an ax handle, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire make a harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And...who, at 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 on 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, heave bails and yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink combed pullets...and who will stop his mower for an hour to mend the broken leg of a meadow lark. So, God made a farmer.

It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight...and not cut corners. Somebody to seed and weed, feed and breed...and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk. Somebody to replenish the self feeder and then finish a hard days work with a five mile drive to church. Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who'd laugh and then sigh...and then respond with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life "doing what dad does". So, God made a farmer.


It turns out the scratchy audio in the commercial came from a speech given by radio personality Paul Harvey at the 1978 National Future Farmers of America Convention, an annual meeting held by the National FFA Organization, an agriculture education group founded in 1928.


That was left for Beyoncé. Someday a cultural historian will write the definitive history of the Super Bowl halftime and how it morphed from a showcase for the likes of the Grambling State University marching band to a platform for gyrating pop stars. (Michael Jackson started the trend in 1993.) Beyoncé dressed like she was headed for a shift at the local gentlemen’s club, and put on a show that was an all-out assault on the senses. She was stunning and athletic, as well as tasteless and unedifying.

The Harvey ad was schmaltzy rustic romanticism, to be sure, but it celebrated something worthy. It was uplifting rather than degrading. It spoke of selflessness and virtue in moving terms.