Mark Inkrott is former NFL tight end and business leader working at the intersection of agriculture, sports, and sustainability.
I was in New Orleans attending a Super Bowl event as part of Fuel Up to Play 60, a partnership between the dairy industry and the NFL. The room was filled with professional athletes, celebrities, business executives and people who had accomplished extraordinary things.
But looking back, the person who made the greatest impression on me that evening wasn’t an NFL superstar.
It was an Iowa dairy farmer named Pam Bolin.
I had known Pam through our work in the dairy industry. She was an accomplished industry leader, a woman of strong faith and someone I had grown to respect. But that evening, our conversation went somewhere beyond the usual discussions about industry.
We talked about family, the farm she and her husband had built their lives around, and her experiences with health issues.
I specifically remember being struck by her positive outlook on life.
Here was a woman who had faced serious personal challenges while raising a family, maintaining her faith and helping operate a farm in an industry where uncertainty is part of everyday life.
As she spoke about the people and things that mattered most to her, I found myself thinking about the bond that develops between a husband, wife and children when their lives are so closely connected through the family farm.
Their work is their livelihood, but it’s also where their children grow up, where families share responsibilities and where difficult decisions often affect everyone around the kitchen table.
I had spent years around professional athletes who understood sacrifice and commitment. Yet here I was, surrounded by some of the biggest names in sports, learning something about life from a dairy farmer.
I walked away from that conversation wanting to be a better person.
Not because Pam offered some profound piece of advice. It was the way she talked about her family, her faith and the challenges she had faced without losing her appreciation for life.
That conversation changed something for me.
I had always taken my responsibility to the dairy industry seriously. But getting to know farmers like Pam made the work personal. Behind every initiative, partnership and decision were families whose livelihoods depended on an industry I was fortunate enough to serve.
Over the years, I’ve met many farmers who have influenced my life. They’ve welcomed me onto their farms, shared their concerns and trusted me with their stories. Those relationships have shaped me in ways I never anticipated.
As I finish this four-part series, I find myself thinking about how much I’ve learned from the people in agriculture.
I entered the dairy industry believing my experiences in professional football had something to offer.
That evening in New Orleans, surrounded by some of the most recognizable people in sports, I discovered that one of the most important people in the room was a dairy farmer from Iowa.
