FarmVille fans can now take their skills to the real world… in a virtual kind of way.
It’s MyFarm created by the UK’s National Trust, an organization dedicated to protecting nature and treasured areas in the country.
MyFarm will allow 10,000 people to virtually run a real life farm in Cambridgeshire. The 1,200 acre Wimpole Home Farm is the first in the MyFarm experiment and organizers aim to help people learn the ins and outs of working on a farm and hope to see it be profitable.
People wanting to be a part of the MyFarm online managerial staff pay a registration fee of 30pounds (about $47) and will debate and vote on important issues involved in running the farm. Which animals to buy, what crops to sow and how to deal with problems are only a few of the issues MyFarm participants are going to have to deal with.
Richard Morris, the National Trust’s Farm Manager says:
“”MyFarm is Farmville for real: real farming decisions with real farming consequences. By influencing the work at Wimpole our Farmers will start to understand the effects and implications of their own decisions. They will also witness first hand how unplanned events can turn a profitable year on its head.”
If it works, could this be the start of how farms will be managed in the future? The virtual board of directors who is anyone with $50 to spare? And if the farm does well, where do the profits go?
They say too many cooks spoil the broth… what will 10,000 farmers do to the farm? One no longer needs to wonder – they can watch it online. [Newslite]
