C24—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, April 5,1980
Penn State computer game teaches crop management
UNIVERSITY PARK -
Using computers. College of'
Agriculture students at Penn
State are learning the
strategies of decision
making in managing crops.
The computers are
programmed to show the
consequences of various
decisions student “farmers”
can make in growing
potatoes. Students “grow” a
crop over and over again,
sharpening skills in
management.
The students have all the
latest tools available for
crop management, including
pest forecasting systems, an
entire “menu” of
agrichemicals, different
varieties, and the best
equipment such as sprayers
and weeders.
Penn State student Nancy A. Noyes practices crop
management skills on a home computer system as
part of a new method of instruction.
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The growing season, using
computers, is made up of 16
weeks of typical Penn
sylvania weather.
This means the weather goes
from good to bad and back
again in a complex and
changing pattern.
In charge of the course is
David R. MacKenzie,
associate professor of plant
pathology. He describes the
learning process as a game,
but very realistic in that the
student’s bottom line is
evaluated in dollars and
cents
MacKenzie terms this
game unusual for education.
At the end of the game, even
if the student has lost large
amounts of money, the
machine says, “want to try
again 1 ”’
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Each week the student
must decide which pest must
be controlled and at what
cost. A total accounting of
expenses is available at a
moment’s notice, which
helps in deciding when to sell
the crop.
Students have access to a
futures * market with a
fluctuating price that can be
used to “beat the machine ”
If the student chooses not to
sell in this way, the crop is
automatically sold at har
vest for whatever the
market will pay
“Successful growers have
often learned these
managements skills through
failure,” MacKenzie
remarked. “The con
sequences are often very
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costly and leave the grower
reluctant toward change ”
The student is scored
against the machine’s
ability, not only in terms of
dollars but also in total
farming skills. Someone
doing moderately well would
be judged a “hired hand ” A
superior performance is
given a “master fanner”
rating.
The student can, at any
point in tune, ask for graphs
of key environmental factors
or the progress of pests as
they increase
At the end of each game,
the student may elect to test
a different strategy under
the exact same weather
pattern. Or the student can
test the same cropping
strategy under different
weather conditions
“This use of interactive
computing in agricultural
education has just begun,”
MacKenzie commented
“With the recent develop
ment of relatively inex
pensive home-computing
systems, we anticipate that
students of tomorrow will
gain experience in farming
through computer games ”
This approach to teaching
agricultural production was
so well received by ad
vanced graduate students
that MacKenzie and
associates developed two
other games The first game
allows students to design
wheat varieties with dif
ferent types of resistance to
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the powdery mildew disease.
This complex game gives
advanced graduate students
an opportunity to test
genetic theory as applied to
crop management.
The other new game
focuses on metnods of
sampling crops to estimate
yield loss. Students are
allowed to uproot any one of
a number of bean plants to
inspect them for root rot.
Once a plant is pulled, it is
considered dead.
The occurrence of root rot
is related, through a very
complex mathematical
model, to the final yield of
' beans. Students must
unravel the complex
relationship In so doing, „
MacKenzie pointed out, they
gam experience in analyzing
the occurrence, distribution,
and control of plant disease
“When you consider that a
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student can grow 20 crops of
potatoes, or breed 10 wheat
varieties, or rip up 100 acres
of beans in one session at the
computer, the cost is very
cheap a lot less costly than
doing it with actual crops,”
he concluded.
Working on the project
were two undergraduate
students in computer
science, Deborah A.
Krawczak of Pittsburgh and
Alan L Claver of Haver
town.
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