Speaking at the South Dakota Governor’s Ag Summit in Pierre, NFL player and fifth-generation farmer Gray Zabel encouraged farmers to maintain perspective through agriculture’s challenges. Zabel also encouraged farmers to appreciate the journey instead of always looking ahead. “I think we get so caught up with, ‘let’s get spraying done,’ then another pass of spraying, then planting, then marketing crops, then getting the fall equipment ready,” he said. “You just keep going and going. Then you turn around and it’s like the snap of a finger from planting my first crop in 2023 to the summer of 2024. It passed by so fast, you don’t appreciate the grind of the day in and day out.” Zabel plays for the Seattle Seahawks and is an alumnus of North Dakota State University.
