The Green DetectivesReal Virtual Farming
To me the Facebook game “Farmville” seemed like it held a disturbing disconnect between clicking icons on a screen and the gritty realities of growing food. Please forgive me for making a judgment without basis, I have never really played the game myself, just watched my son playing it one night. I am by no means a farmer, but I have turned a few shovel fulls of dirt in my time, so seeing him “till” his “fields” with a click of the mouse was a little off putting.
The on-line farming experience may be moving a little closer to reality with a site from Great Britain called MyFarm. The site is part of a project of the National Trust which is running a “crowd-sourced” agricultural effort. Originally the effort focused on a completely organic farm, but recently it has expanded to included “real farming” as being more “relevant” (only 4% of the farmland in Great Britain is farmed organically.)
Crowd Sourcing is a financing model that depends on the small contributions of a large number of people. Usually the crowd comes together through means of social media. The participants in a crowd sourcing are usually not considered investors. To legally be considered an investment, the project has to provide a reasonable chance that the participants will see a return on their money. For this reason, rather than investing in the project, the crowd is usually “sold” memberships.
In the case of MyFarm, members, who refer to themselves as farmers, have the opportunity to learn about farm life and work through regular email and website updates and newsletters. The site features videos and a live webcam. Farmers get to vote about important issues and decisions on the farm, such as the types of crops to plant and what kind of animals should be raised.
The experiment is chiefly intended to help connect people with where their food comes from, and from an educational stand point, it does a very good job. Remember that it is a British site, so if the language gets confusing, don’t blame it on a free grammar check.
The decision to feature both organic and conventional farming is helping to attract skeptics to the site. For many, it is incredibly informative to see the two farming methods displayed side by side. Especially for city-kids who are raised to believe that food comes from the market and a factory before that, and forget that meat was an animal before it was put in a plastic wrapper.