My son recently quit farming. So did several of his friends.
They decided farming was too much work even though they could make money on the crops they selected.
Potatoes and grapes turned a particularly good profit – overnight, in fact. Sown after supper and homework one evening, the spuds could be harvested the next day.
Plants grow much quicker when you’re farming on a computer.
Farm Town, a computer game, is based on a popular board game and accessed through the social networking site Facebook. A recent check showed more than 9.5 million farmers, er, players.
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My 14-year-old son was enthralled with it at first, jumping up between periods of the Stanley Cup playoffs because he had to “go farming.”
His friends were doing the same thing, gaining new appreciation for tomatoes, wheat, rice, pumpkins and corn.
Some acquired enough money to build farm houses, barns, corrals and fences. They had pigs, cattle, poultry and sheep. They hoed and watered and weeded and harvested.
They could invite friends and fellow players to be their neighbours. And if one couldn’t be on the site for awhile, they co-operated to make sure crops were kept alive.
Soon, however, the novelty wore off.
It’s just too much work, my son said. It took too much time and the planting-watering-harvesting routine became boring. They were doing everything “by hand.”
And although the growth rate of their crops was phenomenal, the farmers still had to worry about drought and weeds.
Kudos to Farm Town for incorporating some of the reality farmers face every day.
Perhaps the game developers needed to take a trip to the Western Canada Farm Progress Show in Regina last week.
There they could have found the latest in seeding, spraying, haying, harvesting and storage technology, and offered it to their farmers to make their lives easier.
The show has for 32 years been showcasing innovation and offering real farmers real solutions. It’s about making farming more efficient and productive.
But there is no getting around the fact that despite many innovations, farming is still hard work, something the younger and urban Farm Town players should realize.
It’s also far more complex than planting a crop one day and harvesting it the next.
If only!
Some people say farming is a game of chance. The weather, pests, weeds and markets all affect the outcome.
Unlike my son, though, real farmers can’t turn off the computer to end the game.
