Why Farmville is Bad for Farming

by Greg Plotkin · 2009-12-20 17:28:00 UTC
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If you're one of the 70 million people who have joined the hugely-popular Farmville community on Facebook, I have one very important message for you: Turn off your computer, get out onto a farm, and find out what it truly takes to grow real food.  (Yeah, that's the point of farming, to grow food for people to eat.)

While some have made the case that Farmville is actually serving as a vehicle to increase support for agricultural producers, in my opinion, the game further marginalizes the immense challenges real farmers face and fuels misconceptions about the effectiveness and environmental sustainability of large-scale farm operations.

In the game, seeds turn into crops in days rather than months.  While there are many animals, there's not one slaughterhouse.  Using large amounts of fertilizer results in huge increases in crop yields, without the acknowledgment that the use of this practice in real life is resulting in, among other things, aquatic "dead zones" in places like the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico.

As Peter Smith says over at GOOD, "it’s time to support actual small farmers and stop playing around."  If we don't translate our love for animated soy-bean production into a desire to go out and support families who farm, we'll continue to lose our small farmers to industry consolidation.

I don't ask that anyone stop playing the game, only that you consider supporting the real-life characters of Farmville too.

(Photo credit: RJ Bailey on Flickr)

Greg Plotkin is the Coordinator of Farm Camp at Flying Pigs Farm in Washington County, New York.
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