Kids will soon be able to collect and trade farm game cards to run their own fantasy farm while making crop, livestock, planting, financing and transportation decisions that sometimes get foiled by rivals.
In the “Farm to Table” game, players gain and lose beans through their farm management decisions. Often saddled with obstacles like weather, infections and buyouts, they have to calculate how to offset such losses with insurance, grants or choosing less costly and more productive decisions. The first player to reach 200 beans in 20 turns wins and the farmer falling 200 beans into debt loses their farm to the Bean Counter.
In a time when budgets are tight and families struggle to put healthy food on the table, the farm game teaches kids and families new options.
Dr. Roxanne Bruce, in conjunction with Portland-based Standard Magic, created the game as part of a larger effort to link kids, schools, families and farmers to locally grown and created foods. The game and her other two related ventures, FarmFinder USA and the umbrella company, Cultivated Encounters, will get a first look on Wednesday, Oct. 21, during a panel presentation and launch of the live demonstration version at Tech Week in Portland.
“I will be looking for farms to participate in the beta testing of the new site that launches during tech week next week,” the Ludlow resident said. “The more connections we make in our communities between farmers and schools, the brighter the future.”
Cultivated Encounters, co-owned by Bruce, Victoria Gray and Steven Rose, serves the farm to school community. Working directly with farms, school nutrition directors and teachers, Bruce, who has a doctorate in business administration with a focus on agriculture and marketing, is a matchmaker of sorts. She links previously disparate groups – local farms and school nutrition procurement – while teaching them how to prepare the foods.
“Food security starts in your community,” she said. “When farmers connect with schools, we give the school nutrition directors access to fresh, local ingredients. Money spent at these local farms goes directly to supporting businesses in Maine and around the school district.”
As part of the farm game, kids can earn additional game cards in their school cafeteria if they scan a posted QR code related to the farm that provided items used in that day’s menu, Bruce said, adding that they will eventually be able to also trade cards with each other.
“I am building it like a Pokemon or Magic the Gathering,” she said.
Along with that will be the FarmFinderUSA maps, currently featuring 3,490 farms on the site, 671 mapped locations and 181 local food options. As part of the initiative, there will also be printable curriculum for teachers and YouTube video libraries for help with cooking farm fresh foods.
Additionally, Bruce has a Food is Medicine contract with Avec Community Action (formerly Aroostook Community Action Program) and she is working with MicMac Farm in their agricultural kitchen to cook and bake items that are sold through Cultivated Encounters sales site.
“The farms have been bringing me seconds that we don’t want to go to waste, and then I turn that into food items that we offer to the schools and the public,” Bruce said. “If I work with people and I’m teaching them, at the end of it, they shouldn’t need me anymore — and if they do still need me then I screwed up.”
