Slashdot Mirror
Real Life Farmville
arkenian writes "The BBC reports on a farm in the UK to be run by online subscribers to the MyFarm website voting on which crops to grow and livestock to rear. For a £30 annual fee, 10,000 farm followers will help manage Wimpole Home Farm, in Cambridgeshire. They will be asked to make 12 major monthly decisions during the course of the year as well as other choices. The National Trust says its MyFarm project aims to reconnect people with where their food comes from."
I really don't see how this can be a good idea. Trying to accomplish anything by letting it be managed entirely by what's essentially an unaccountable committee group is going to end in ruin. But hey maybe that doesn't really matter. Getting 300k euro + what ever government subsidies farmers in the UK get my be worth totally fsking your productivity and crop output.
Yes it's epicly stupid, but you have to admit if there's at least a few trolls involved this farm could get really interesting.
It's like the mind going AWOL, it's there somewhere
It will never work
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
My thoughts exactly, as soon as /b/ gets involved, this is gonna be pretty funny. Pool's closed due to aids.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I think that's why they're charging people 30 bucks to manage their farm for them. Now they're making profit on the crops and public stupidity.
Next, a real-life Cow Clicker game, anyone?
http://www.bogost.com/games/cow_clicker.shtml
What? I personally thought this was a great idea to build upon. In the country I come from, there is a huge economic gap between the farmers who live in the villages, and the consumers in the metropolitan cities. The government tries to subsidize the farmers by giving them money and infrastructure, but it's just not enough.
If social experiments in Facebook, Twitter and Anonymous have shown us anything, it is that the general public likes to participate in making major decisions (which makes then feel important), and are willing for this. It is a win-win situation for everyone.
However, it is crucial that the trolls be weeded out by some means.
it may give people more of an appreciation to the farmers their lives depend on, and the not-so-clean-cut decisions they have to make throughout the year to produce the best crop possible.
it hurts with the stupid.
None of us is as dumb as all of us. Wanna proof? How about the last economical crisis?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
... the citydwellers - with their antibiotic EVERYTHING, who can't tell the difference between good and bad soil from the smell of it, who have never grown anything past that shriveled Venus fly trap plant at age ten - start having to make critical decisions and invariably wind up making them badly and then start going hungry.
(What I'm saying is that if they really want something like that to be educational it has to directly impact the participants' stomachs, there has to be visceral conseqeunces; short of that it's still just a game.)
Anyone who cares about what goes into their body should watch the excellent documentary Food Inc
Its us-centric but I bet a lot of what is talked about happens to some degree in other countries too.
the ABC rural programme down under ran a cotton farm from listener feedback, choosing harvest times, types, cropping, organic or pesticide, all the way through to selling the crop.
2-3 years ago.
yawn.
Um...isn't real life Farmville...a farm?
You know, like real life Simcity would be (wait for it) a city.
So, this guy charges 30 pounds/year to allow 10,000 people to chat with each other and vote in polls on how they want to run the farm... while the guy pretends to listen to them?
Holy shit, why didn't i think of this?
I guess this experiment gives new meaning to the term "bought the farm". Unfortunately, it's the plants and animals that will take the brunt of any bad decisions. Please don't have a cow man!
Why should that be anything but a fringe function? It's like asking if they've never plowed their own wheat, written their own operating system, or installed their own plumbing and electricity. The complexity of our civilization requires specialization.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
And many children think milk comes from factories, not cows. Particularly those living in cities.
Western societies have it worse than Asian. Well, sort of. In China many restaurants have their food on display: various birds, snakes, fish and other sea animals, turtles, sometimes even dogs and cats.You point out which animal you want and they'll cook it for you. Killing if you prefer can be done under your watch.
Markets here often have large parts of cows, pigs and other large animals hanging on display. Such as complete rib cases, lungs, and tails (with the skin and hair in place preferably). The heads too. It doesn't need much fantasy to see which part of the animal it was.
Fowl like pigeons, ducks and chickens are also sold alive (though in Hong Kong at least that's quickly disappearing over bird flu fears). You choose the animal, hands-on if you like, the shop keeper will slaughter it while you're waiting. Fish, seafood and turtles are also routinely sold alive. I have had a dead fish jump off the kitchen sink an hour or so after being killed and gutted... that scared us mainly because the movement was so sudden and unexpected. A dead fish still jumping in the bag I've had quite often.
In the west indeed there is not much left of the original shape of the animal - many people dislike the idea of seeing what animal it used to be. You won't see a row of pig's heads in the butcher's display, for example. Fish is commonly sold dead, preferably sliced or processed as fish fingers or so. The head is typically tossed out, while the Chinese consider that the best part of the fish. Once when I cooked fish complete with head and tail a friend commented "I don't like my dinner to be watching me!".
So all in all, yes you're totally right. Most people don't know where their food comes from. They wouldn't know how a potato plant looks like (OK that's a non-obvious one). They may recognise corn plants, when grown full.
Knowing where one's food comes from is good I think. Makes people think more about their planet, the value of a clean environment, and how all that dirt we spew out in the air comes back to haunt them quite directly. Health is related to food: you are what you eat, and when you eat dirt, well that can't be too healthy either. And even if just 10,000 people can join a project like this may well generate a lot more general interest. Curious to see how it's going to play out.
I wonder how much control can be given to the players. Would they be allowed to make hiring decisions after being shown various resumes? Or firing and promotion decisions? I'm curious if this experiment can make certain class of farm manager redundant if it works really well.
As if the average /b/ denizens would/could pony up £30
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
-Farm owner(s): Hey, what is your favorite [insert category here for something that's in-season) - 10,000 followers [see: a total of £300,000 in additional funding per year]: YAYY! -Farm owner(s): *Grin as they get market data while their subject PAY THEM for the information. This could be a really bad idea, but it'll probably increase their bottom line profit enough to pay their bills and then some.
it hurts with the stupid.
Oh to hell with it. Have we fallen so far as a civilization that people no longer know where their food comes from? Have never seen butchering and slaughtering done? Have never killed an animal themselves, skinned, cleaned, and done their own cuts. I can probably answer myself too. Yes to all of the above.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love (Robert Heinlein)
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
With all the credit card info they allegedly stole from Sony, they should have no problem. =P
Why should that be anything but a fringe function? It's like asking if they've never plowed their own wheat, written their own operating system, or installed their own plumbing and electricity. The complexity of our civilization requires specialization.
And yet, human beings are capable generalists. For many things, a generalist's non-specialized abilities are sufficient. For instance, I'm a Linux Sysadmin. Fairly specialized, but it's not the only thing I do. I also drive a car, fix things around the house, make informed decisions, etc. While I personally haven't done every item on Lazarus Long's list (I've never set a bone, for instance), I feel like I could do them if needed. Maybe not as well as an expert in that field, but still.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
I thought the Kibbutz method was fairly successful until the seventies? It still is, there's just less of a committee thing going on.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Oh to hell with it. Have we fallen so far as a civilization that people no longer know where their food comes from? Have never seen butchering and slaughtering done? Have never killed an animal themselves, skinned, cleaned, and done their own cuts. I can probably answer myself too. Yes to all of the above.
All the activities you listed are things most of us could learn to do with just a little training. Poorly, perhaps, but sufficiently well.Those skills are not what will make or break a post-apocalyptic survival.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Some of the participants are going to want to eat the produce from "their" farm, in turn neglecting their local farms and burning more fuel to get the goods sent to them, or traveling to the place. Well, it's all in the UK so it's not as bad as buying passion fruit from the other side of the globe, but still. This experiment is a first, so it will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
I think "Pick Your Own" farms are also a good way of reconnecting people to the source of their food. When you're out there in the fields walking, crouching and bending down to pick a couple of tomatoes for yourself you're really thankful that you don't have to do this every day. Then again, same problem : lots of cars driving to the farm, when a couple of trucks going from the farm to the city's market saves more gas.
Surely the very definition of civilisation is founded on the idea that everyone is not an island unto themselves? We don't all have to have an extensive understanding and experience of every single thing that takes place for society to function. Obviously it helps if we have a basic understanding, otherwise people are afraid of things they don't understand, or open to their ignorance being manipulated.
No they're skills that will make or break you getting to the post-apocalyptic bit. But being a realist, I don't believe we'll be heading to that point in my lifetime.
Om, nomnomnom...
Well, that's what industrialization does. You can't expect a civilization to both become efficient enough to mass-produce digital computers and keep food production so local that many people have seen agriculture outside of a picture book. It is interesting and useful to know how food is produced, but so is a detailed knowledge of physics, a multitude of foreign languages and circuit design - yet none of that is considered a required part of common knowledge.
Sure, you can make a case that survival skills are the only essential ones if civilization collapses, but the other ones are just as essential to keep it from collapsing or to rebuild it if it does.
we know now better than ever where our food comes from.
much better than anyone knew 30 years ago, and so much better than anyone knew 100 years ago - we even got pictures from the spice fields in india, imagine that, we can take a car and go see the local farms if we want to and to top it off the news is full of real stories about real shit about food - read a newspaper from 1950's and see the difference. Except the really poor farmers of the world, they know their food comes from their crops, but they have no idea where the supplements they take come from though(spices, fruits they don't grow themselfs, preserved ingredients they need for cooking like yeast and so forth).
but how many people could that farm in theory even feed?
what this farm is looking is 300 000£ in extra funding. it's not going to provide food for the followers. and they decided that they'll have 10 000 subscribers, which kind of makes sharing your farmville account with 10 000 others, wouldn't that be sweet? what happens is that they can and will manipulate the voting and 10 000 is enough that the votes will spread to some 'sensible' suggestion that they give. I doubt they're going to plant just carrots for a year and a second year of farming rabbits even if it got played to be the top choice.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I for one would find that very educational. In Germany they did just that.
Because it's what most humans have done, for millenia? Food growing is who humans are, it's what separates us from the animals. And because NOT having any idea where food comes from is dangerous as people just think Chilean sea bass just comes from the store. Or worse, don't think about it at all.
Specialization is for insects.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
/b/ isn't all hate and lulz. Maybe they will vote to farm lolcats or something.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The other poster wanted to *weed out* the *farm* trolls.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Will they decide by a simple majority, in the case of purely internal affairs, but require a 2/3 majority in the case of major decisions?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Good news for the farm, they get £300,000 even if all their crops flop, and since the farm gets to create the choices being voted on, that'll probably be unlikely. Profit ahoy!
That's because we live in a post-Deliverance era.
it hurts with the stupid.
Oh to hell with it. Have we fallen so far as a civilization that people no longer know where their food comes from? Have never seen butchering and slaughtering done? Have never killed an animal themselves, skinned, cleaned, and done their own cuts. I can probably answer myself too. Yes to all of the above.
I8-D
I think everyone should see this at least once: http://vimeo.com/22077752 Shows how proper butchering is done and where our food comes from.
We need an app for that.
That sucking sound you hear is my bandwidth.
You're correct about the animals, though the reason for it is hygiene. How does Hong Kong manage to transport and 'store' live animals?
However, maybe the USA is different, but fresh fish in the UK is often displayed whole (and dead). (fish counter at Tesco) However, the fishmonger will be happy to cut off the head and tail and remove the bones. It's usually particular species of fish that are shown whole (e.g. salmon), while others are usually prepared (e.g. cod).
Top hit for "fish recipe" on Google UK
You're correct about the animals, though the reason for it is hygiene. How does Hong Kong manage to transport and 'store' live animals?
Fish and other seafood are easy: stored in smallish water tanks with serious aeration devices. Transport in open barrels on the back of a truck (those trucks always have some tubes running down the back to drain spilled water). They don't have to worry too much about livable environment for the fish, as long as they're moving by the time they're sold it's enough.
Chickens and other fowl are simply kept in metal cages, usually stuffed really full. The birds have barely any space to move. Food/water generally not provided, again the animals just have to survive the time to slaughter.
Turtles and frogs are normally kept in nets, presumably transported that way too.
Restaurants will usually provide more space per animal, as that makes for better display.
Hygiene is an issue indeed, and is exactly why the sale of live fowl is going down. The Hong Kong government a few years ago bought back the license of many live chicken stall holders, seriously reducing the number of traders. Newer stalls are completely enclosed in transparent walls, the customer can not put their hands on the live birds. It was the practice that customers can inspect and select their own chicken, which I think is part of the reason selling them live was so popular. And nowadays live chicken sellers must close their stall one day a month for cleaning - all markets operate 7 days a week here.
Can't it be both?
"I don't want more choice, I just want nicer things!"
-Jennifer Saunders as Edina Monsoon
The current farm process looks nothing like what people have done for millenia. And people have been making clothes for longer, should we all be expert seamstresses? Demanding that everyone should know all the details of how to farm is ridiculous.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
People should be able to do the things likely to be required of them in life, including the 1% chance necessities. ... because if you have a crush injury, for example, having made medical help available you are good, but having learned to set a bone, you are screwed.)
Setting a bone is a good example: That's a rarely needed skill. Should everyone really know how to set it? Or, should we learn to ensure that medical help is available instead (something much easier to learn, and more generally applicable
Butchering a hog (equivalent to what the parent suggested) is similar. You'd be talking downfall of civilization before that would be needed by most people, who would then actually be better off having learned other skills with that time.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
People should be able to do the things likely to be required of them in life, including the 1% chance necessities. ... because if you have a crush injury, for example, having made medical help available you are good, but having learned to set a bone, you are screwed.)
Setting a bone is a good example: That's a rarely needed skill. Should everyone really know how to set it? Or, should we learn to ensure that medical help is available instead (something much easier to learn, and more generally applicable
Butchering a hog (equivalent to what the parent suggested) is similar. You'd be talking downfall of civilization before that would be needed by most people, who would then actually be better off having learned other skills with that time.
I agree, but sometimes you are cut off from civilization, and that's when it's nice to have some basic abilities. Of course, I think if I was stuck on an island somewhere, with hogs available, I'd still probably have a hard time surviving. I mean, first you have to catch them, before you can start thinking about how to butcher them.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Can be both, but not only the factory. Cows (or other female lactating mammals for that sake) are an important factor.
And many children think milk comes from factories, not cows. Particularly those living in cities.
And now they are going to think it comes form the interwebz.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
All I know is that chicken nuggets come from hydroponically grown chicken seeds; no animals are bred or slaughtered in the process.
Thanks for the post. Online games skyrocket in proportion in our era. Indeed, there is an upward trend for its utilization. There are currently about sixty two million individuals that play Farmville. Moreover, in connection with this, to link virtual life to real life, an internet Wimpole farm in the U.K. is turning itself into a Farmville. Up to 10,000 subscribers pay 30 pounds apiece for the right to get to make major decisions about the farm. I found this here: Online Wimpole farm creates real-life Farmville.