This afternoon, we took the role of farmers, traders and company employees in a fictional country of Centralia. We all started off with different amounts of equipment, resources and money and had to ‘grow and harvest’ maize and coffee. This was to highlight the difficulties people have in developing countries. During the growing seasons we were allowed to grow, harvest and trade our crops but we always had to have enough food at the end of the season to feed ourselves. The extra money we made was spent on health care and education for our families.

The seasons were often interrupted with news reports that affected each group in different ways. The farmers were devastated when they experienced land grabs in which land they had been using for growing food was sold over their heads to the companies. Price rises in food caused all of the groups problems but affected the poor farmers the most. The Global Market also reduced the buying price of bagged coffee and harvested corn. Drought caused by climate change meant that 50% of everyone’s corn crop was damaged and taken off them, which meant they couldn’t sell as much and sometimes left them with no food to eat. Everyone was frantically trying to grow, harvest and trade during the seasons which meant their was quite a buzz about the classroom!

However, news reports also brought good news for farmers. The Companies realised that farmers were vital to the world trade business so they made investment in them by giving them extra resources (scissors, pens, bags and labels for coffee). The farmers were over the moon! The final piece of good news for farmers was that the Government closed the loop tax holes which meant that the companies had to pay the correct tax and this allowed the Government to pay farmers back for their hard work.

Despite two groups of farmers joining together to form a co-operative, the group that had the most money were the company employees. We had a lot of fun, made a lot of noise (sometimes sounding like a real Stock Exchange) and hopefully learnt some important lessons about the world of farming, particularly in developing countries.