Virtual becomes reality in Japanese farm game

May 12, 2015

Crops grown on screen become crops on a real farm

Farming is slowly starting to make its way into the video game scene.

Games like Harvest Moon, Farmville and Farming Simulator 15 allow the players to go through all the motions of what it’s like to run a real farm.

From planting and harvesting crops to ranching livestock, the players are involved with the daily farming responsibilities.

Then, at some point, it just ends and there’s nothing else for the player to do – until now.

A Japanese startup company called Telefarm has developed a virtual game that has real-life rewards.

The game is called “Enkaku Bokujo”, which translates to “Remote Farm”. It’s an online simulator that lets players rent out a plot of virtual land at a cost of about $4.50 US per square meter, per month and an additional $4.50 US per packet of seeds.

What happens next is pretty cool.

As the player plants, waters and maintains the crops on their virtual farm, somewhere on an actual farm, a farmer is mimicking the actions.

In other words, when a player waters their virtual sweet potatoes, a real farmer waters real sweet potatoes. There are a variety of crops available for the players including soybeans and watermelons.

The real-life farmers will mimic almost all the tasks the player does on their virtual farms with the exception of purposely destroying or abandoning the crops.

When players finish planting and it’s time to harvest and they’ve been successful in growing their crops, the actual crops they planted and grew on their virtual farm will be delivered to their door for them to enjoy.

Just to clarify, if they successfully plant and harvest two watermelons, then two actual, edible watermelons will be delivered to them to eat. Any spare or leftover crops can be sold to other players in the game’s real-life vegetable market.

Watermelon

Join the conversation and tell us your thoughts on this new Japanese farming game. Would this be something you would play if it becomes available in North America? Could it be used as a tool to introduce the next generation of farmers while still piquing their interests with video games?

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators