Former UNC football player bags yams to donate to community

A truckload of sweet potatoes arrived at UNC this weekend to be bagged and donated.

The process was part of Yam Jam, a new event sponsored by the North Carolina Study Center that aims to provide locally grown sweet potatoes to organizations and people that need food.

First Fruits Farm, owned by former UNC football and NFL player Jason Brown, contributed sweet potatoes to the event. Brown said he started farming to connect with his fellow people and after being led to it by God.

“So I was at the top of my game, but guess what, the day that I turned 27 years old it was like no other — I woke up that morning and I looked in the mirror and dude, I was going through a midlife crisis because I began to measure up everything that my brother had accomplished in his life dedicating his life to service over the course of 27 years and everything that I had accomplished in my life with, yeah, with football, yeah, successful football career, fortune, you know fame and guess what? There was no comparison — literally no comparison,” Brown said.

Brown said he wants people to learn how to grow food and that edible plants should be planted around communities.

“We’ve given all of our fruits, alright, there hasn’t been a single potato that’s been marketed. They, every single one of them, has been given away and that’s awesome,” Brown said. “But at the same time we also do not want to, you know, to handicap people in our giving because if you only give, give, give without the challenge of people, you know, growing and learning how to grow food on their own and stand on their own two feet then, yes, you are handicapping the people that you’re serving.”

Programming Director at the North Carolina Study Center, Matt Hoehn, said around 20,000 to 25,000 sweet potatoes were dropped off at the event and will be distributed across the area.

“Some of these are going to TABLE in Carrboro, we offered some to Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, but I think they might have gotten some sweet potatoes last week, several ministries in Durham, several church groups that run food pantries ...” Hoehn said.

Hoehn said he wants to grow the event by getting more produce and people and hopes to see it eventually become an annual event.

“This is the first year and it was kind of planned impromptu, but we’ve been talking to the Browns and we would absolutely love if it could become an annual event at UNC and expand it, you know — more potatoes, more people, more groups, more students — we’d love to see it,” Hoehn said.

Fayetteville resident Wilson Pauldin was in attendance at Yam Jam at UNC in order to take the donated sweet potatoes back to his community. He said he enjoys helping people that are in need.

“When I get back to Fayetteville I call the people around my neighborhood and I give it to some of the elder people first, I give it to the other people and I give to my pastor and then I take the rest to the church and I distribute to the church people,” Pauldin said.

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