Getting a good chuckle at the premise of this "game" and the comments here. I'm almost curious enough to buy it just to see how they go about simulating the financial aspects of farming. Cash flow, operating capital, marketing on the CBOT, etc. I think there is great potential for something like this as an educational tool to allow people to better understand the complexity of farming and the tremendous risks that are involved. This year is a great example. Our corn crop is devestated and trying to figure out how to price the crop we do have is not easy. And there is next year to plan for. Our subsoil moisture is non-existent. Do we plan on another dry year or do we assume we will get enough precipitation for a decent crop. So many decisions based on future events that we have no control over (markets, weather, economy, etc)
As an aside, I think a great idea for a mod to this game would be Dairy Farm Simulator. You have to play it starting at 5 AM EVERY morning for at least 3 hours and 5 PM at night for another 3 hours.
Something I've been wondering lately about large scale farming: do you
do soil chemistry, sampling for nitrates, potash and phosphorus every
year to plan for how much and what sort of fertilizer to buy? I'm
wondering because the imminent demise of cheap and easy supplies of
phosphorus is going to mean that farms are going to want to be very
smart about how they deploy P fertilizer. (Readily mined deposits of
guano phosphorus are ending just in time for the depletion of cheap
sources of energy, which will be required at a substantially increased
rate to extract and refine mineral sources of phosphorus.)
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