Farm game may be educational tool By JERRY WEBB University of Delaware A farm game has been added to the list of “games people play”. It’s so new, you won’t find it for sale in any toy stores. In fact, you may never find it for sale. The farm game I played was an experimental game developed by a graduate student at Cornell Univer sity. It included a board, a spinner, dice, several other small items and a number of sheets of paper designed to inform the player about agricultural decision making. The object of the game was to make money. My involvement with the farm game occurred at a meeting of agricultural college editors. Some 20 of us seated around a table played 'well into the evenmg as we won and lost fortunes m the farming business. I’m ■ = I 1 WHEN A MAN NEEDS A FRIEND! GET CLOSE TO A FROM BINKLEY & HURST BROS WE BOUGHT A TRAILERLOAD OF CASE UNILOADERS TO SAVE MONEY NOW WE'RE PASSING THE SAVINGS ON TO YOU! ~ BIMOEY & HORST BROS. proud to sav mv farm made $34,000 in its first year of operation. That was after tax income. But before you get the idea that I really know what I’m doing, I should hasten to explain the game. It includes a lot of the decision making that any farmer must do, which fields to plant in what crops, how much fertilizer to use, machinery investment and depreciation, fuel costs, and so on. Things like insect out breaks, rainfall and other natural disasters are con trolled by the roll of the dice or a flip of the spinner. So m that sense, it may not really be like farming. My profit was strictly the result of a favorable insect situation, adequate rainfall and the luck of having chosen crops that did well that year. To a veteran farmer, the farm game would probably UNILOADER 133 Rothsville Station Road Lititz, PA Phone: 717-626-4705 be boring, unrealistic and of little interest as a game or a teaching tool. Perhaps a group of college students in a farm management course might get a lot out of it, or maybe vocational agriculture students could play the game and sharpen their farming skills. The real potential I see for such a game is the nonfarm audience-those consumers who have heard about far ming but have never really been mvolved. As the game’s inventor indicated, it’s about as close to farming as you can get without really being out there. So a group of consumers who are trying to understand the farmers’ problems a little better might sit down around a table with such a game and go through some of the agonies that a farmer must go through. Decisions must be made on how many acres to plant to what crop, how much msect and disease protection to apply, how much fertilizer will be necessary, whether to go for high-investment crops like potatoes and vegetables or stick with soybeans and corn. The make-believe farmer then has an op portunity to figure his ex penses, roll the dice for his yield potential, spin the weather indicator and fmd out what kind of crop he gets. The player then rolls the dice for prices and from there calculates the income. In a simplified, condensed way the game is not unlike the process a farmer goes through. So in that way, a nonfarm player gets the feeling for what a farmer faces. And really that seems to be what farmers are asking consumers to do. That is, to understand their problem, and maybe the farm game is about as close as the consumer can get to walking in that farmer’s shoes. Perhaps after an hour or so of playing the game, that consumer starts to understand a little bit of the agony of a hail storm, or an msei-t outbreak, or a 4S& EVERY WEDNESDAY IS DAIRY DAY AT NEW HOLLAND SALES STABLES, INC. New Holland, PA If you need 1 cow or a truck load, we have Irom 100 to 200 cows to sell every week at your price Mostly fresh and close springing Holstems Cows from local farmers and our regular shippers including Marvin Eshleman, Glenn Fite, Kelly Bowser, Bill Lang, Blame Hoffer, Dale Hostetler, H.D. Matz, and Jerry Miller SALE STARTS 12:30 SHARP Also Every Wednesday, Hay, Straw & Ear Corn Sale 12:00 Noon. All Dairy Cows & Heifers must be eligible for Pennsylvania Health Charts. For arrangements for special sales or herd dispersals at our barn or on your farm, contact Abram Diffenbach, Mgr 717-354-4341 Norman Kolb 717-397-5538 V* _ Name ■ Address II City | State ■ Phone Ldficasu.. ~. i.iitg, December 31,1977—63 declining market, or the exhilaration of a major export transaction that boosts crop prices. It also helps to teach the relationships of fertilizer and pesticide expenditures to total mcome and other variable input decisions. The player who fertilizes heavy and protects well has a better shot at a higher yield. For that protection, however, he pays con siderably. If crop prices are good, he makes money. The farm game was an interesting couple of hours for me. It was a challenge competmg with 20 other people to see if I could make my farm pay. As I indicated earlier, I did make money, Farmers score high in corn yields QUARRYVILLE - Dale Mellinger, Quarryville, Lester Smith, Lebanon, and Harold E. Miller, Lebanon, have placed high m the local Project: 200 com growing program with a com yield of 155.3 bushels, 172.8 bushels, Zip Code check" □ FARMER □ STUDENT J but many lost simply because of the cropping decisions they made or the weather or yield handed them strictly by chance. When you think about it, that may not be a lot dif ferent than what farmers are going through as they make cropping decisions and then take their chances on the occurrences of nature and the markets that he ahead. The farm game is not commercially available although it might be some day, but it is the kind of thing that could be developed. It could be an excellent device for a farm-city meeting or as a topic for a nonfarm group that wants to understand farming a little better. and 154.4 bushels, respec tively, per acre. Mellmger used Funk’s G -4646 m his high yielding plot. His fertilizer program consisted of 319 pounds nitrogen, 143 pounds phosphorous, and 72 pounds potassium. He used Lasso/Atrazme for weed control. The crop was planted on May 6 m 34-mch rows at 22,000 plants per acre. The yield was adjusted to 15.5 per cent moisture. Smith also used Funk’s G -4646 in his high yielding plot. His fertilizer program consisted of 615 pounds nitrogen, 630 pounds phosphorous, and 415 pounds potassium. He used Atrazme and Lasso for weed control. The crop was planted on April 26 in 30-inch rows at 24,500 plants per acre. The yield was adjusted to 15.5 per cent moisture. The crop was irrigated. Miller used Funk’s G -4321A m his high yielding plot. His fertilizer program consisted of 134 pounds nitrogen, 152 pounds phosphorous, and 34 pounds potassium. He used AAtrex and Lasso for weed control. The crop was planted on May 5 in 36-inch rows at 22,000 plants per acre. The yield was adjusted to 15.5 per cent moisture. Project: 200 is sponsored annually by The Producers of Funk’s G-Hybnds and is the largest com growing program of its kind in the nation.
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