Inventor Turned Farm Desperation Into Prosperity
MAIRl MacLEAN, Journal Business Writer, EDMONTON
George Rohrbacher was sitting on his tractor baling hay one fine July morning 20 years ago when he got the idea that changed his life and saved his farm. "We'd just about lost it all...we were going broke," he recalls, talking about the years of drought that hit his Washington cattle spread in the late 1970's.
A city boy turned rural devotee, he was writing a historical novel about farm life at the time.
"It struck me like a ton of bricks. This would be a better game than a book ...and 90 per cent of what's in the (game) box I in- vented that day," says Rohrbach- er. "Then it took a week to con- vince my wife I wasn't ready for the 1ooney bin."
The idea of The Farming Game spins around the very real risks and chances associated with farming. It begins with players inheriting a small 20-acre farm; they have no cash but a job in town. The object is to build a farm large enough to support a family fulltime.
One trip around the game
board represents a calendar year,
players roll the dice at harvest
and there are "farmers fate
cards," which toss a drought,
grain embargo or market crash
into the mix.
"It's like the family farm economy at ground zero," says Rohrbacher, who describes farming as a great subject for a business game, "because there are so many contravening chance variables - the weather, prices, yields.
"And these chance variables change each time you play."
He lists three reasons for coming up with his invention.
"I had to do something economically...it was an effort to diversify our farm; I also wanted to explain to non-farmers what the world's most essential industry is about, and it was a way for farmers to laugh at the difficult situations farming brings you - if you lose your sense of humourin this business, you're ready for a straitjacket."
Rohrbacher literally bet the ranch to bring The Farming Game to market.
"Or everything the banker hadn't already encumbered, between $80,000 and $90,000," he says, chatting in a booth in the Sportex Building at Farmfair International.
The first production run totalled 10,000 and the game sold 7,000 copies within the first six weeks. In the two decades since it's been available, it has become an evergreen in the toys and games industry, with sales totalling 400,000 - that's 50 semi-trailer trucks full.
The game can be found world-wide. It's in thousands of schools and in 1994 it was translated into Russian by the World Bank, which used it to teach the principles of capitalism to people in the former Soviet Union.
The game has also won this year's Best Buy Award from the Canadian Toy Testing Council. Northern Games of Edmonton is manufacturing the 20th anniversary edition.
Rohrbacher has anecdotes galore from game fans - people who've worn out three copies, or played it in Borneo or feel it saved their children from a life of delinquency.
One extended family has celebrated Thanksgiving for the past decade with a Farming Game tournament.
It's also particularly popular with the Amish population of Lancaster County, Penn. "We've got more accounts there than anywhere."
"It's been a marvellous, interesting adventure," saysRohrbacher, who now spends half his time fam1ing and the other half on his game business. The game side represents three-quarters ofhis income and has helped put three ofhis children through university.
"We still farm, we love it," he says, adding that his game also
tells an important story about fann life. '1t's a roller-coaster. And
it's very much the same now as it was 20 years ago -we're in a
period of a very difficult farm crisis."
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Edmonton Journal, Friday, November12, 1999