Seth Young 3rd World Farmer

Global Issues Portfolio Reflection

3rd World Farmer Reflection

Third world farmer was a game designed to make us think and realize what most people in Africa go through, even through its through a computer. My strategy was to buy a scythe and buy  the cheapest crop and pay with about two thirds of my remaining money. I would get up to $90 dollars or more in one turn and build up my money then buy a well. And from there it keeps going up. Buy a road.[Very helpful] A short term decision is where you are thinking about what will help my family in the immediate future. They are not very bad but they are not good either, You will buy food and instead of growing your family will survive for another year then you are stuck until you get enough money to pay for some more food.

You use all of your money to buy food and plant crops. The crops you plant fail and you have no food now. You have to walk very far for water. Your health starts to fail and people in your family. You have kids to keep family alive. Get harder to feed the family. Boys dying faster than women. A person from Europe or North America could come and say ‘We will give you proper training or we will pay for the education of your children.’ And that is a green arrow out of poverty. A long term decision is where you think of your children’s education or maybe putting aside some money for your children when they get older or for emergencies. You keep them in shape or if they get sick pay for it with your existing money. Long term decisions are good because it will improve your life and your children’s lives in the long term. For example in 3rd World Farmer you can keep buying a variety of crops to get some money if some other crops fail : Planning Ahead or buying a well to improve your women’s health.

I learned exactly how bad the situation for some people in Africa are. I was so frustrated and could barely stop myself from attacking the computer. People are being approached by people from ‘Rich’ places and are saying ‘We will pay you to put some of our harmless barrels of ‘Harmless Liquids.’ The game doesn’t remind me of any SLR’s and I actually thought the game was the opposite of the SLR’s.
Which MDG’s does this simulation relate to and why?
This simulation game relates to Poverty, Diseases and the Education of your family. The poverty is very obvious. You have fifty dollars and if you start to do well people come and steal from you. You have to walk forever to get water, and your crops fail often. The diseases come randomly and viciously. I was playing the game very well and then suddenly my family dies from a disease. Pneumonia maybe.
http://www.fotopedia.com/en/Poverty
I chose this image because it shows a slum where people living in poverty are in the city or suburbs also. This shows that even if you let one of your family go to the city you still have a chance of being in trouble and you also get less food and a person to help with the workload.
Include the reflections from your blog and responses to the videos on the Moodle and sources on the blog.
Sometimes Farmers are so desperate that they will carry drugs or grow drugs to get money or they are approached by someone to carry it across an airport. More often than not that family will get sucked into the underworld. Also we have shock factors like droughts or a pandemic or maybe even a civil war.
The barriers they face are sometimes equally bad. At some point they might be torn between starvation and getting carried of by corrupt authorities as quoted by the game. ‘You haven’t paid your farming license, you are to come with us!’ or they might be in a country wide poverty circle and will have a very slim chance of getting out of poverty.
Farming is what provides the food. If the farmers can’t advance or develop then the general population will start to starve so farming is linked to development by feeding the population and since food is one of the basic needs people have the population will die and the progress of development will grind to a halt.