Episode Five: The Farming Game
During the 1970s farm crisis, a young family nearly lost everything as family farms and agricultural folk knowledge began to vanish. Then, they invented a board game. For a transcript of this episode, click here.
KEY SOURCES
The Farming Game website
“Farmer Bets The Ranch on Board Game and Now He’s Reaping Riches,” Sept. 11, 1994. Aviva L. Brandt. Associated Press.
“Games People Invent: For Farmers” by Michael Guilfoil. Dec 28, 1979. Washington Post.
“From baling hay to making hay with farm game: Inventor turned farm desperation into prosperity” by Mairi MacLean. November 12, 1999. Edmonton Journal.
“Goldendale couple markets farm game” by Charles Lamb October 14, 1979.
“Farm Ruin, in a Roll of the Dice” by Ellen Barry. November 9, 1993. The Moscow Times.
“George Rohrbacher: Game is serious business for a Klickitat County farmer” by Leah Beth Ward. April 9, 2006. Yakima Herald-Republic.
Back To The Land: The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency in Modern America by Dona Brown
Broken Heartland: The Rise Of The Rural Ghetto by Osha Gray Davidson
The Farm Crisis by Iowa PBS
“‘Everyone was Pounding on Us’: Front Porch Politics and the American Farm Crisis of the 1970s and 1980s” by Michael Stewart Foley in the Journal of Historical Sociology.
Perilous Bounty by Tom Philpott
“How America’s Food Giants Swallowed The Family Farms” by Chris McGreal (The Guardian)
Every Farm A Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture By Deborah Fitzgerald
Special thanks to Pace Amidon, Wes Crawford, Emily-Jane Dawson, Joseph Dusenbury, Kyle Huizenga, Neil Knobloch, Ben Meyer, Amy Mitchell, Linda Whiting, Gabe Wilson, and the Rohrbacher family.