Have a successful Internet farming game and the Huffington Post's featuring of "hot organic farmers" made agriculture more popular? But if so, is that good for farming's future? Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum isn't so sure. Census data show that fewer than half of family-run farms make a profit, she writes, but "even though farming no longer quite makes it as 'a way of life,' it's somehow become the next best thing (or maybe an even better thing): a lifestyle."
The Huffington Post recently featured an online photo gallery of what it determined were "hot organic farmers." Response was so great that the Post decided to do another spread. "We think organic farmers are rock stars and heroes," the site says. "And nothing is sexier than someone who likes to get dirty and supports the great food revolution." Exceeding the gallery's popularity is a new online social network game called FarmVille launched on Facebook last June. Zynga, the game's creator, says FarmVille, where users are given a virtual farm to manage, is the most popular game on Facebook and the fastest-growing social game of all time.
"Users report missing work, abandoning friends and setting their alarms to wake up several times during the night so they can make the moves necessary to advance in the game," Daum writes. But what does the dichotomy between gamers losing sleep over virtual crop rotation while their waistlines expand from an ever-growing diet of junk food say about the future of farming? "Nothing goes better with Internet games than prepackaged food that doesn't require stepping away from the computer," Daum writes. "Meanwhile, a whole generation just might grow up believing that strawberry milk comes from pink cows. Hey, maybe agribusiness should start working on that." (Read more)
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