The Farming Game

The Farming Game is a board game simulating the economics of a small farm. Published in 1979, it was designed by George Rohrbacher, a rancher in Washington state. The Farming Game painfully reflects the real-life difficulties of running a farm. The names and places in the game are the names of families that have farmed for generations in the Yakima Valley and other parts of Central Washington. When Rohrbacher invented the game, it was a desperate time for his failing farm and small family, which is reflected in the difficulty of the game, and the multitude of points taken into consideration in farming that are often left up to chance. It is considered a board game which has educational value.

The game sold more than 150,000 copies by 1985, the profits from which saved Rohrbacher's farm. By 1995, the estimate of copies sold was 350,000.

Objective

The game's objective is to raise money by harvesting crops and selling livestock, including hay, fruit, grain, and cattle. This is done by moving around the board using one die. Each trip around the board represents a year of farming, and players can increase their chances of earning more money by planting more crops or raising more livestock, which can be purchased by exercising the option given from an Option to Buy (O.T.B.) card a player has drawn during the course of the game.

Elements of the game are intended to reflect aspects of real-life farming. For example, players sometimes encounter Farmer's Fate cards that are either good or bad, similar to the Chance cards found in Monopoly. One such card allows a player to collect $2,000 from every player who has no harvester, if you own one. Another card informs that due to the IRS garnishing your income, you may not collect on any of your harvests for the rest of the year. These cards are intended to reflect the element of chance or luck that is involved in farming, which is the aim of the game.

Game play

The board itself is divided into squares representing forty-nine of the fifty-two weeks in a year, with different sections grouped together under the usual harvest for that season. While there are multiple sections for harvesting hay (the first, second, third, and even fourth cutting), livestock are sold only once a year. Similar to real life, poor timing (or unlucky die rolls) can cause the player to miss, or skip over, a harvest.

Players take turns rolling a die, traveling around the board, harvesting their crops when they can. Crops are purchased through O.T.B. (Option to Buy) cards usually referencing "Neighbor Sells Out: 10 Acres Grain", the crops are grouped into Hay, Grain (Wheat and Corn), Fruit (Apples and Cherries), and Livestock (Cattle). While hay is the cheapest to purchase and most often harvested, just as in real life, the chance for large profit is much smaller than with livestock or fruit. What balances this game, and provides the most difficulty for real life farmers, are operating expenses. In The Farming Game, whenever a player harvests a crop, he draws a card entitled Operating Expense, examples of which are "Pay $500 for Irrigation" or "Seed Bill Due: Pay $1,000". Also, certain spaces on the board instruct the player to draw a Farmer's Fate card. Farmer's Fate cards are usually unfortunate for the player, including references to the drought in the 1970s, Mt. St. Helens erupting, or chemical mishaps in which all the player's livestock are slaughtered. There are also expenses or bonuses incurred while traveling the board - some spaces instruct you to pay a fee for Winter-killed wheat or owning cattle, while another gives you a bonus of $1000 for a convenient "warm snap" early in the year.

Other mediums

The Farming Game was adapted for Windows 3.1 in 1997, when it won the 1997 Mahnke Multimedia Award given by the Association of Educators for Communication and Technology (AECT), an international organization.

The Farming Game was also adapted for Mac, PC, and Linux in November 2012 by Game Masterminds, a licensee of The Weekend Farmer Co.

External links

• Official website
• The Farming Game at BoardGameGeek