Third World Farmer Reflection

Global Issues Portfolio Reflection
3rd World Farmer Reflection

“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Third World Farmer is a game in which you are a farmer, and your aim is to have all your family members in the farm for as long as possible. The purpose of the game is to show us that it is very hard to get out of the poverty cycle, and that every year many horrible things happen. Also another purpose of the game is to show us that getting food is very hard, and that being a farmer is no easy task as we had thought as you can get sick easily, and medicine is very expensive. My strategy when I played the game was to plant different crops such as corns, and peanuts. This strategy was quite effective as when one crop died, at least one of them would survive, and be sold. Another strategy I used during the game was to have many babies so when someone died in my family, I would have a replacement. This turned out to be an awful strategy because when I had babies, the mother’s health was very critical, and I had to waste a lot of money on medicine ,and I had no money left.

A short term decision is plant crops to survive, and how to pay for the crops. They are poor decisions because if something terrible happens to your crop, your crops die, and you will have no food, and you will get no money from the crop. Also short term decisions lead to a development trap as you can’t get any richer as you lose everything quite often. In the game I sometimes made no profit at all, and I lose a lot of money. If they use short-term decision-making, then when I played the game, when something bad happens, you will have no alternatives, and you will lose a lot of money. Since it happens very often, you will be stuck in the poverty cycle for three generations according to the teacher.

A way to get them out of the cycle is use more efficient farming. You should use more efficient farming because if you use efficient farming like sending your kids to school, then your kids are educated, and can get out of the cycle, and also if you use better resources which applies to long term decisions then you can survive longer.


A long-term decision is a decision which you have planed for the long future. They are excellent because if you have a plan for a long time, your plan will be better because normally long-term decisions help you get out of the poverty cycle by getting an education. They are also good because you normally can get vaccinated which makes you healthy. In the end your infrastructure would be better as you have a lot of money. Also Evidence is from the global issues blog. They lead to development because if you get an education, then you can get out of the poverty cycle. In a website I read, it said that education is the way to get out of poverty. If you are vaccinated, then you are healthy which has increased your standard of living.

I learned that being a subsistence farmer is very hard because you will only use short-term decisions as you are always hungry which is what the global issues blog said. It also means you will never get out of the poverty cycle until 3 generations have past or if you get help which is according to the teacher. I also learned that farming is hard, and bad things will always happen which was what happened when I played the game.

The SLR it is closest to is reason critically because you have to think hard about how to make enough money, and how to survive. In the game I survived because I reasoned out the solutions how to get out of my problems.

The closest MDG is Goal 1 which is end poverty, and hunger. It’s related because in the game you are below the poverty line, and you are always hungry.

The challenges faced by farmers in L.E.D.C countries is they are too hungry to think about development so they only use short term decisions which are awful decisions. According to the global issues blog, short term decisions stop development which is a big challenges. The barriers to development for a farmer is they only care about their basic needs like food, water, and shelter as they don’t have them. For them education, and vaccinations which lead to development are useless as they want to survive first which is what the blog said. Farming, and poverty are linked to development as farmers are usually poor according to newspapers, and it’s linked to development because when you are poor, you can’t really be developed as you use short term decisions which won’t help you to be develop.

We have learned about the UN Millennium Development Goals.
We have planned, run and reflected on Peace Day which was a success as we raised $700.
We have invested money in the Angkor Wat marathon to help people affected by land mines.
We have played the simulation game Third World Farmer and we learned a lot about how some people in L.E.D.C's meet their basic needs and how they have fewer choices than us.


Third world farmer picture. I chose it because it shows you how the third world farmer game looks like. Image from thirdworldgame.gif