Farming Simulator 23 gives children a connection to agriculture

So sayeth a newly minted, digital farmer.

Farming Simulator 23 gets unleashed onto the world today (in Australia and New Zealand at least) on the Nintendo Switch console and mobile platforms.

The game builds on its well-established and hugely popular predecessors which put the player in the driver's seat of high profile brand machinery in order to etch out a living from agriculture.

The exceptional detail to such things as fertiliser amounts, commodity markets, fuel usage, green manure crops and the stunning visual landscape all make the game a wonderfully immersive dive into farming life.

This reviewer could write at length about the satisfaction from growing a crop of wheat from scratch, having cultivated, planted, fertilised, harvested and delivered the product through the entire supply chain.

There is plenty to be said for the fun of owning high-powered gear and not batting an eyelid at spending more cash on a new tractor simply because that colour isn't represented in the vast machinery shed on the property.

But this all takes a sideline to a different enjoyment to emerge from this latest installment from Giants Software: watching and hearing the nine-year-old lad embark on his own farming adventure.

For years, researchers and agricultural lobby groups have expressed concerns about the growing divide between children and farming with surveys showing many kids simply don't know where their food, clothing and fuel comes from.

Farming Simulator, with its easy-to-learn controls and "jump right in" accessibility could go some way to bridging that gap.

However, the recklessness and youthful abandon with which young "H" is tackling the game indicates artificial intelligence might be a safer bet for sustaining humanity into the future.

Take for instance, his attempts at growing a grain crop.

"I couldn't believe it; I spent all this time pulling a seeder around a paddock before I realised I'd filled it with chicken feed instead of grain," he relays at one point during a lengthy vent season.

Details about how he'd purchased an elevated transport machinery trailer give extra light to the first line of this article.

Apparently he was looking for an easier way to feed his chickens (a new livestock addition to Farming Simulator 23) and decided driving a tractor with a grain spreader up onto a shed roof, via the aforementioned elevated machinery transport trailer, was the best option for this.

Points should be given for lateral thinking.

This idea came, afterall, from wondering why his chicken flock kept disappearing. He figured out this was due to something called death, a common ailment stemming from not feeding them in the first place.

The hundreds (possibly thousands) of options available to the player within Farming Simulator 23 is somewhat overwhelming to a 40-year-old writer who is more used to the straight forwardness of guiding a portly plumber in red overalls through a side-scrolling brick and pipe landscape, or guiding falling blocks into position to Russian theme music.

The coming generation is awash with options in almost all parts of life, including video games where part of the fun seems to be having so many roads to go down, and ignoring most of them.

Menus can be brought up with ease to change machinery, monitor weather or market performances, and of course, purchase new vehicles.

Care should be taken when starting out though, as H can attest.

IN OTHER NEWS:

While perusing trailers and devices he'd never even heard of, he came upon an autoload bale trailer.

Lured by its real-world accuracy of being able to self-load hay bales, H took the plunge and purchased.

Perhaps it was the giddy excitement of a new bit of kit, something many farmers would be familiar with, or perhaps just slippery fingers but he soon bemoaned his spending habits after purchasing another one, of a different brand.

To make matters worse, he hadn't bought an actual baler in order to make hay bales in the first place, putting his already dubious purchases further into head-scratching space.

He'll be spoilt for choice the next time it comes to splurging with real life, big name machinery brands such as Case IH, CLAAS, Deutz-Fahr, Fendt, John Deere, Krone, Massey Ferguson, New Holland, Valtra and many others all onboard.

One of the newer features to Farming Simulator 23 is the value-adding functions to crops.

Players can grow wheat that can be processed at a mill and in turn made into flour before being used at the local bakery and sold on as cakes.

It highlights the incredible mark-up process that occurs throughout the ag supply chain.

H is particularly excited by the dairy stream which allows the processed milk to get turned into chocolate.

He now refers to himself, much to his mother's delight, as a chocolate farmer.

The concept of money management also provides a point of amusement.

With cash running low (Farming Simulator 23 has a constant on-screen bank account figure) because of various, perhaps questionable investment decisions (see autoload bale trailer reference above), drastic measures had to be made.

Some players may seek out better markets for their produce or offload machinery (the mechanisms for both are straightforward enough) however H plays a high stakes game.

Instead, he chose to sell his house, essentially leaving him homeless but still owning hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

As he succinctly put it: "I had lots of money but nowhere to live."

He fruitlessly explored the vast map for a motel which is somewhat out of the realms of a game that simulates farming.

Had it been Housing Crisis Simulator, then it would be a different story.

A player can choose to have their farming avatar go to sleep within the homestead (that is, if they still have one) in order to pass time and get to daylight to keep working.

However, there appears to be no dependence on sleep for endurance, safety, life longevity or mental sharpness, and therefore a player can work like a nuclear-powered machine around the clock.

And so it is with H who chooses to conduct all manner of farm tasks under headlights, regardless of what the neighbours might think.

On the subject of neighbours and money, H is always on the lookout for a quick extra buck. It comes as no surprise then that he has, on several occasions, attempted to harvest a neighbouring farmer's healthy crop of cotton.

Rather than be sent to jail for trespassing and theft though, the game simply doesn't allow this, bringing up a warning in red writing, much to the frustration of a 9-year-old wanting to grow his agricultural empire by any means possible.

In a world of video and computer games saturated with first person shooting, low moral content and "hack and slash" gameplay, Farming Simulator 23 provides a refreshing breath of down-home country air.

No one dies should things not go right; vehicles don't even get smashed when run into trees, trains or barns.

There is a simple addictive delight in bearing the responsibility of an agricultural operation. It's curious how the intensely hard work of real-life agriculture can be simplified into such a pleasurable experience.

Farming Simulator 23 also achieves something on a different plane that few other games can, which is educating the player not just about the latest machinery (H is keen to discuss the attributes of the various cultivators with his classmates once the game rolls out further) but also an insight to the vital and scientific mindset required for farming.

The few minor agricultural (and housing) set-backs have failed to dampen the spirits of this budding legacy builder who says he is looking forward to exploring the other options as the game unfolds before him, like boom spray arms on the Hardi Aeon 5200 Delta Force.