This is former NFL player Jason Brown. He left football at age 29 after earning millions from a $37M contract to become a farmer and run a 1,000-acre farm where he grows crops and has donated over a 1.5+ million pounds of food to people in need.

    by Algrinder

    14 Comments

    1. >1,000 acres = about 750 football fields

      >His farm is built on a mission to feed the hungry first.

      >He grows crops like sweet potatoes and cucumbers.

      >When asked how he learned to farm, Brown said he learned how to farm by watching YouTube video

      >He donates them to food pantries, hundreds of thousands (and later millions) of pounds.

      >He quickly gained a reputation for being a human plow who relentlessly cleared pathways for some of the game’s best. He got paid well for it, signing a $20m free-agent contract with the St Louis Rams in 2009. At 26, he was the position’s highest paid player in the league, and he bought the toys to show it: the MTV Cribs-style house, the flashy cars to match.

      >But none of it filled the terrible hole ripped through him after his older brother, Lunsford, a US army intelligence officer, was killed in September 2003. A mortar round hit Lunsford’s encampment outside Baghdad.

      >“I began comparing everything I had accomplished in my life with Lunsford,” Brown said. “But there was no comparison. He lived a life of service and sacrifice. And I was living what everyone said was the American dream. But I didn’t feel like it.”

      **Just a note, after St. Louis Rams released him, he could have signed with another team and kept earning more but this dude chose to stop playing football completely and become a farmer.**

      >he was a highly sought-after free agent. He received lucrative offers from multiple teams (including the Ravens, 49ers, and Panthers) but outright rejected them to start farming.

      [Source 1](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/06/athlete-farmers) [Source 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Brown_%28American_football%29?)

    2. Beneficial_Soup3699 on

      Imagine the world we’d live in if even 1/4 of the 1% behaved like this instead of money hungry sociopaths.

    3. Probably a good idea not to stay in the NFL too long given the history of brain damage people get. Making the money to life a long and fulfilling life and then go live it. Smart and kind man it seems.

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