(Photo: Iowa Soybean Association / Joclyn Bushman)
Just days before I was to keynote a meeting of farmers in northeast Iowa, key U.S. trading partners imposed double-digit tariffs on soybeans and other ag products. Guidance for biofuels remained missing in action, Iowa’s drought map was expanding and federal funding promised to farmers for reducing their carbon footprint was frozen.
With so much good news, I couldn’t wait to take the stage!
Not knowing where to start, I searched Paul Harvey’s recitation of “So God Made a Farmer.” I clicked on the audio track and, within seconds, the iconic broadcaster’s stirring words filled the room.
“And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God made a farmer.”
The speech, shared by Harvey at the 1978 Future Farmers of America (FFA) convention, went viral when Ram Trucks featured it in an ad during “the big game” in 2013.
“I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, 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.”
The story, suited perfectly for Harvey’s unmistakable narration, was anonymously composed and mailed to him. Its author remains a mystery (Harvey guessed it to be 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 for lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon — and mean it. So God made a farmer.”
At a time of so much chaos, confusion, and uncertainty in agriculture, it’s worthwhile to rise above the noise and reflect on the profession’s heart and soul — the 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; 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, so God made a farmer.”
The busy world is speeding us up. E-mails, social media chatter, cell phone calls and text messages are constant, while podcasts, TV channels and talk radio options continue to proliferate. The noise and pace are so overwhelming we soon allow what’s urgent to distract us from what’s important.
“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.”
With spring planting in full gear and no shortage of issues to prioritize, let’s take a step back, reset and refocus on the blessing that is the people involved in farming.
“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.”
If you focus on the hard, life gets harder. But if you focus on the good, it’s going to get better. And there’s nothing better than the dedication, resiliency and neighborliness of the Iowa farmer.
“(It had to be) somebody who would 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 that he wants to spend his life ‘doing what Dad does.’ So God made a farmer.”
Thank you for doing what you were called to do. Thank you for being a farmer.
By Aaron Putze, APR, ISA Chief Officer of Brand Management & Engagement, aputze@iasoybeans.com