Summing up the opinion of many who saw the ad, Animal Agriculture Alliance president Kay Johnson Smith said the commercial “really showcased a piece of Americana.”

But to its detractors, the ad does nothing of the sort.

University of Texas historian Rachel Laudan, who grew up on a farm and finds the ad galling, writes that “if we continue to accept the kind of images promoted by this ad, images of the farmer as a good hearted chap, working with the technology of the late 1930s, and thus not frightfully smart, how are we ever going to get a sensible grip on agriculture?”

This agrarianism, argues Laudan, is built on a mistaken belief in “the simpler yet superior moral values of the rural life.”

A withering Funny or Die parody of the Dodge ad, God Made a Factory Farmer, blasts the ad for ignoring the large, subsidized corporate farms of today.