The Anthropology of Farming Simulator
sapiens.org
sapiens.org
For ATS, there's a certain relaxing of "just driving". You've got a goal, and simple, well defined tasks - go here, pick up the load, go there, deliver the load. The 'go there' part is largely an autopilot of a few decades of driving experience with a bit of "ok, this is different" when dealing with something that has a large trailer.
For the most part, its something I can play without needing to do any deeper problem solving. To that end, the game is relaxing.
With the nature of the game, its also something that one can "do" - there are few impossible tasks unlike what one encounters with a day job. The consequences for not completing something is a few points however they are measured - but rarely game ending (and in many cases, that's resolved with a save file).
It is about getting something 'realistic' done in today's world of ever increasing demands.
(very late edit)
My current gaming binge is Hardspace Ship Breaker - which is a game about being a shipbreaker for space ships. Its got the "this can be routine" (though if you mess up the reactor it can get very interesting very fast).
Ship breaking ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_breaking ) is in the category of most dangerous jobs and space ships are obviously not realistic. But it's the game that you can just get into the grove and do. One of the best things about the game (for me) is that it is 15 minute shifts. So you can easily say "I'll play this game for 15 minutes on lunch break" and as long as you stick to one shift, that's 15 minutes. The shift ends and its done.
It also is devoid of any of the (often catastrophic) downsides of making a mistake in real life. Turns out driving can be relaxing and fun if you remove anxiety involving death, injury, and property damage. Perhaps the same applies to farming sims.
> The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona, to Las Vegas, Nevada, in real time at a maximum speed of 45 mph (72 km/h). The feat requires eight hours of continuous play in real time to complete.
> If the player makes it to Las Vegas, one point is scored. The player has the option to make the return trip to Tucson for another point, a decision which must be made in a few seconds or the game ends.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller%27s_Smoke_and_...
A realistic driving simulator from Omaha to Cheyenne would be pretty boring, I'll give you that.
Now, you could head south of Phoenix, and mostly avoid anything interesting, but you still have a few intersections and so on, this is not one endless road into the desert.
Which isn't to say it'd be a compelling experience, even the Hoover Dam route would be extremely boring for most of the duration.
I'll admit, I play with the Mechjeb autopilot for doing most maneuvers because they get so repetitive. But it's fun to have an alarm clock full of different missions and switching between the different things you have in progress.
Then I ran out of places to go so I wrote (and eventually handed off) the Kopernicus mod to allow for more planets to be added and the community keeps making more interesting places to go!
The main good feature of blue-collar work.
And you don't need to be blue collar. When I was working tech support, I got in, signed in and that's when I started. At the end of the day, I signed out and that was the end. I worked the "east" shift at SGI in '98. East covered the phones from 5am to 9am with each person taking 2h in that range (mine was 7am to 9am) and then we did callbacks from 9am to 1pm or so (depending on when you started). Central picked up the new calls at 9am and covered the new calls from 9am to 1pm and then west picked up live calls from 1pm to 5pm - I'm not sure how the different teams did their coverage.
Anyways, the thing was at 3pm when I signed out I was done done. I didn't have niggling problems of tech support haunting my mind (compare to being a SDE) or trying to get ahead of the curve of technologies that management will ask about. And the "not worrying about those things" - that was my most productive personal programming time that I've ever had. I have gotten better over the decades at coding - both in the code itself and the use of larger systems... but in terms of quantity and satisfaction of things done, that was the best time.
As for driving I been playing dirt rally 2, where I drive at a comfortable pace.
Apply this to being a farmer, which is a lot of work, and weigh this against the barrier to entry of being a farmer for just a few hours every so often, vs. doing it digitally.
Also in farming. I do think there are people who like the hard work and simple life. But as a business it is terrible.
That said, I dearly love my dogs and am trying rather hard to not think about the tens of thousands of dollars I will end up spending just on food alone.
I had a couple of dogs who died of old age. I couldn't bring myself to get another dog so instead we dog sit! We use the Rover app and it's been pretty awesome. You get to be a "doggy grandparent" for a couple days, spoil the crap out of them and then poof! They go back to their owners and you don't have to deal with all their BS (because let's be honest: almost every dog his it's own BS)
Running to the farm & feed store (perhaps an hour round trip, or even more, depending on where you are, and it's getting in the way of getting actual work done) for something or another, mending fences, grading drive-ways and other roads, cleaning yourself and your clothes and boots up after you get covered in mud, cleaning equipment, getting tractors un-stuck, repairing tractors, and so on.
And what they do include is a button press, not a process. Hook up a discer? Back up to it and press the button. No getting out, screwing with chocks and some kind of device or another for raising the tongue into place. No pinching the shit out of your hand because you were careless.
No weed-eating around equipment that's parked outside. No re-painting the barn. No re-sealing some screw holes in the sheet metal roof that've been leaking. No diagnosing and fixing a slipped belt on the combine. No tossing square bales onto a trailer.
No cuts on your arms from corn leaves. No itchiness from handling straw. No hay (ha, ha) fever. No spending an entire morning getting one damn cow or another in the chute for the veterinarian.
These "realistic" simulators still almost always cut out all the worst crap that's the reason people don't have tons and tons of fun doing it in real life. The stuff you do in the game is maybe 5-10% of what you really do.
I've found the "cozy" genre on Steam to also be a great way to find games like these, though I suspect there are other terms that can be used to find them: https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Cozy
And Sim-type games really scratch that itch. They often have (relatively) deep gameplay mechanics that are easy to learn but hard to master, don't have a lot of time pressure (many are turn-based, or real-time but with no serious deadlines), and most importantly aren't multiplayer.
This is really overthinking the subject.
Simulation games often have really tight, addicting game play loops. The player starts with nothing and has to do everything in a grueling, manual fashion. But each iteration of the game loop, the player gets a minor upgrade that makes them slightly more effective and/or adds an additional challenge to consider. After a few hundred iterations, the player has built a gargantuan automata that handles the core gameplay loop, freeing them up to focus on ancillary projects like decorating or collecting.
This is exactly the kind of situation that hammers on the dopamine receptors of a lot of people. Do something challenging, get a reward, then invest that reward to get a better one the next time. It's basically gambling.
Farming happens to be a subject that carries a lot of preconceptions, allowing players to pickup the game concepts a lot more quickly without as many tutorials. But there are plenty of simulation games out there with different subjects but similar game play loops.
I spent like 40 hours playing a game about salvaging space ships. I don't have any particular desire to be in space not do I like space ships or anything. It just happens to be a game that follows this formula, so it's fun.
But my real answer would be that some people are over stimulated at work, and some are over. The understimulated one's I think gravitate to the "grand feats" type of games while those who are overstimulated at work are more looking for either laid back or mundane games to play. All these "_ life sim" games are generally in that mundane category and that's the audience most captive for these forms of entertainment.
Although, I can offer an anecdote. I really enjoy playing truck simulators, namely American and European Truck Simulator. I had to drive a large box truck recently and I found it super easy - the high up position, looking at the mirrors to back up and parallel park perfectly, and the joy of the open road. Then I realized that truck drivers do this every day for weeks on end as a job. Really appreciate the folks who keep our economy moving.
Do a little of this today, a little of that tomorrow, even a little of this and that within a day, and I feel like we could all tolerate a bit more mundanity (for lack of a better word) in our lives. Cut vegetables, drive a truck, pump sewage, work a factory line, it'd all be easier if we weren't doing the same thing all the time, 40+ hours a week.
I vaguely remember some factories would not let workers change jobs once they got good at them, to their detriment (with carpal tunnel and other RSIs)
The wrenches don't allow doing steps in the wrong order or wrong torque, but that only gets so far
Endless ATC, Firefighting Simulator: The Squad, Transport Inc., Cold Waters, The Invisible Hand, and 112 / 911 operator, and Tin Can come to mind. There's also "study sims" like DCS World which push you really far into the simulation thing, both in requiring a high degree of competence and in the amount of stimulation you have flying a mission.
Some people just enjoy what they already do and want to do even more of it in a way that doesn't create additional physical hardship and risk.
In the US, subsidized crop insurance lowers the risk of low yields and provides a nice safety net.
"With so few alien invaders, why are video games about invading aliens so popular?"
"With so few NFL teams, why are video games about managing NFL teams so popular?"
You have simple tasks and an open world for you to decide how to accomplish the task. There's typically an easy way, which requires more time to complete due to the travel distance involved. And then you can scale all the way up however difficult you want.
And then there's the recovery effort, when your "it didn't look that deep/muddy/steep" plan falls through.
I do like the farming games though. Or at least I did, until I bought 5 acres in the country and got out here. Now if I get the itch for a farming game, I do some kind of project.
But there's something very nourishing about the idea of living in a world where you're interacting with and directly influencing the physical world around you. Both to care for a plot of land and to make things by hand. I think there's also something nice about living in a small world. No grandiose interconnectedness. You, your family, your community, your livestock and the land around you.
It's so hard to get some of that I think unless you're also willing to completely give up living modern life and move out to the middle of nowhere ala Life Below Zero, or if you're wealthy enough to own land close to town (I'm fortunate enough to have found a nice 2 acres close to town, but it costs a premium compared to other houses the same size). Simulation is a great way to get some of that in small doses.
When I’m frustrated with my job and modern life in general it’s easy to imagine running away and living on a farm. When I’m sleeping in on a Saturday or taking a spontaneous weekend getaway I’m very glad that I don’t live on a farm.
Really the question, why so few farmers?
Government education has specifically trained and discouraged people from becoming farmers, intentionally reducing the number of farmers.
Biosciences has made farming quite unprofitable. The use of fertilizers, gmos, pesticides, etc have made a small time farmer basically unprofitable compared to the farmer with 80,000 acres and large machines.
There are better professions to earn a living. Hell, the cost of startup is ridiculous. ~86 acres near where i live is $5 million.
You also cant really live near cities. There's no rockstars coming to rural canada. You have to live in toronto to get those rockstars. Good internet is also not in rural areas.
But then you also have governments actively taxing farmers to tremendous degree. For example, Carbon taxes disproportionately impact a farmer's old diesel in his massive tractor compared to a econobox tiny car. Farmers obviously don't care. A wide carbon tax like that ends up in the consumer's hands as food inflation.
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/food-inflation
Basically nobody has normal/low food inflation because of this.
Then you have the 'fertilizer reductions'... https://wheatgrowers.ca/advocacy-resources/fertilizer-reduct...
IF you work in an industry where the government is actively screwing you over so much. You choose a new profession right away. Hence no farmers.
Second Life hit this three years ago. You can buy land, build a house or buy and install a prefab one, and build pretty much anything you want. But about a hundred thousand users paid for a premium membership so they could get a nice, but rather banal, pre-built American suburban house. A house in an enormous suburbs with strict rules and a sort of homeowner's association. There's even a mini-game where you can put out a trash can on specified days and people come around with the garbage truck and empty it.
Given the ability to do anything, most of the population runs out of ideas fast.
Organic agriculture/horticulture on a scale large enough to survive is definitely possible and best practices are usually well-documented by your state’s extension.
Conventional, factory farming is “easier” and more widespread, so there is more comfort in numbers doing that.
The reality of farming is that of a death trap. Brutal work, low pay, total imprisonment.
(Except potentially for the biggest of operations, don't know about that).
There's a common quip...
It is very easy to become a millionaire as a farmer, it's a two step process.
1) Be a billionaire 2) Buy a farm
And some of those games include also the good parts of social interaction, fishing, foraging and more, in a simple enough way, not the complex, messy and tiresome reality. Probably some farmers enjoy those games, but the gamers may not like all what is involved in real life farming (and things that works around it, like i.e. economy).
Sad part of that is that I have a bunch of relatives that do own farms, but have no interest in farming, the only reason they have those farms is so they can wait the land price to raise before they sell it eventually.
Come to Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, etc and visit a farm. Their reported annual income may be small because of amortization/depreciation, but net worth is very typically several million.
If you’re a poor farmer, you’re not doing it right.
And yes, I'm from Iowa.
Additionally, you're completely ignoring appreciation and paying down the loan. Farmland has went from ~2k /acre to 12k in about 20 years.
* https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2022/09/16/farm-minimizat...
Simulating the farming experience without the massive financial risk (and the back-breaking work/unforgiving hours) gives some of that joy without most of the downside.
If you're willing to volunteer to cover night-time calving for cattle in snowstorms in February, you can probably get the real experience for free.
IMO, It's that you don't need to buy millions in assets using debt to generate a profit at great risk based on many factors that you have no control over.
https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/farm-loan-pro... and https://www.farmers.gov/loans
> Farm Ownership Loans can be used to purchase or expand a farm or ranch. This loan can help with paying closing costs, constructing or improving buildings on the farm, or to help conserve and protect soil and water resources.
> USDA’s Farm Service Agency offers up to $600,000 for eligible borrowers through Farm Ownership Loans.
> Farm Operating Loans can be used to purchase livestock, seed and equipment. It can also cover farm operating costs and family living expenses while a farm gets up and running.
> USDA’s Farm Service Agency offers up to $400,000 for eligible borrowers through Farm Operating Loans.
Aside from the "grow things" there is an enormous amount of business sense and domain knowledge (what to grow when, how to fix that thing now, does this other thing need fixing?) that is needed to accompany it.
I live on a horse farm and when we bought the property it didn't really cost that much more than a nice house in the suburbs. My 10 acres and a large new house cost far less than a lot of small houses on tiny lots in places like Seattle or SF. If we had wanted to be farther out (I'm about a 50 minute commute to Minneapolis), we could have gotten more land for even less.
The major adjustments are (a) it's very difficult to take a vacation, (b) the amount of income that goes towards taking care of animals and (c) the work never ends (see [a] above). Besides that, it's all peachy :-)
The issue is scaling. In order to make enough to live off of the income generated by the goats, you need a dozen goats, which themselves need food, shelter, and medical care. And for dairy goats, you also need the equipment for milking.
Food is the most important one because it's an non-stop expense, but it's not unmanageable since it scales directly with the number of animals.
Still, animal husbandry isn't something for me. It's not the animals, but rather the business side of it that is at issue.
http://www.cs.uni.edu/%7Ewallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2018... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26209541 (and my commentary on it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26215448 )
A Nubian goat will apparently produce an average of 2000 pounds per lactation, which averages 284 days. Since gestation averages 149 days, you're getting less than 2000 pounds per year per goat. (https://extension.psu.edu/dairy-goat-production)
2000 pounds per goat is about 250 gallons. A brief search tells me that you might get up to $5/gallon for milk wholesale, which gives you $1259 per goat per annum, or $15000 for a dozen. That's pre-tax, of course, and doesn't include your expenses.
I guess if you sell directly to consumers for $26.66 per gallon, you could gross $80k.
You can produce cheese and such, but that's an additional enterprise. And of course there's potential for income selling goats for meat, since yearly breeding is going to give you a surplus unless you're looking to expand the herd.
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https://www.thehappychickencoop.com/how-to-make-money-raisin...
> A goat farmer can earn $8 to $12 per gallon. The most profitable dairy goat breed is the Saanen, in which you can profit up to $36 per day.
From https://backyardgoats.iamcountryside.com/goat-breeds/nubian-...
> Productivity: Average 6.6 lb. (3.9 kg) milk per day/1920 lb. (871 kg) over 305 days with 4.8% butterfat and 3.5% protein. ... Although yield is lower than for most dairy breeds, the high levels of milk solids impart a rich flavor and improve coagulation, making it an ideal constituent for making goats’ cheese.
Compare with https://backyardgoats.iamcountryside.com/goat-breeds/saanen-...
(digging) - this gets to https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/640/3/0... - the saanen appears to be about 15% - 30% more milk in the same time frame depending on the source.
The "sample dairy goat budget" on the page you provided is an interesting resource.
The price for goat milk - https://milklife.com/articles/nutrition/differences-between-...
> ... For about a quarter per 8-ounce glass, cow milk offers more nutritional value than just about any other beverage you can buy at this price. Goat milk is nearly five times more expensive, ringing up for $1.24 per 8-ounce glass.
The budget worksheet puts the milk at $6.50/gallon.
My math was based on a that very rough $36/doe/day math without accounting for expenses. I was interested in the "is the herd size a dozen? two dozen? or a hundred? ... in order to live ok?"
The worksheet puts a rough estimate of the total receipts which the worksheet puts at $1,323.10/doe/year.
The returns over variable costs per doe per year is $359.01 and returns to management is $225.72.
So my rough estimate was only about $75 off?
Let's look at that $36/day figure, because I don't trust those blogs.
The PSU page puts the absolute top production for the Saanen at 4870lb per lactation period. Add in the gestation and you're getting 4870 lb per 433 days, or 11.25 lb per day -- 1.4 gallons per day average.
At $12 per gallon, that's $16.8/day per doe, or $6132 per doe per annum, for a grand total of $73k gross receipts per annum on your herd of a dozen.
That's if you can get the top of the market price for the milk, and if all of your goats produce at the absolute top capacity and you get them bred the day after they dry up (but in this case you should probably be breeding your wondergoats for sale, or making money selling semen from the wonderbucks).
One of the parts that the worksheet brings in is all the expenses - both fixed and variable. This is where there is a "yes, you could have a dairy goat heard and make money, but in order to make more money, you need to better vertical integration of the operation" which gets into the growing your own fodder which gets into other economies of scale and ends up looking more like a regular dairy operation growing oats whatever.
The "have a heard of goats, milk them twice a day and live off of that with lots of free time between the milking" isn't something that is easy to do.
My wife is a horse trainer and also runs a horse rescue operation. Her average day involves 2-6 hours in the saddle. Now, many horse lovers think that it sounds like so much fun. Like video game testing ("oh, you get to play games all day, that must be great"). But the reality is that it's hard physical work day after day after day correcting the behavior of a powerful animal that is multiples of your bodyweight and doing it under conditions where you could be severely injured.
Back to goats: I think you'll find that most small animal producers are doing it as a side income from something they enjoy. I have a neighbor who has a few dozen goats, but they are also running a commercial trucking company.