Food Wide Net Eleonora Chiri ETH ZĂźrich, Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant
takes over a rural community and manages its entire food system, with the possibility to contribute solving real world challenges. Our aims are: a) to provide a learning tool about the food value chain; b) to offer a platform for non-profit organizations to increase their visibility and reach; c) to create an entertaining mean for people to contribute to the development of rural communities worldwide.
ABSTRACT Food Wide Net (FWN) is an online simulation of the food production system in a rural community. During the simulation the players face several location-specific challenges and, by their virtual actions, they are given the chance to impact real on-going projects held by partner non-profit organizations in real locations around the world Our aims are to raise awareness of food production dynamics, to increase the visibility non-profit organizations and to create an entertaining mean for people to make a positive impact on agricultural development issues. To do that we rely on concepts such as open-source programming, crowd-sourcing and dissemination through social networks. The community of Pomerini (Tanzania) was selected as pilot and is presented as a real application of FWN. Due to its potential for development, we foresee to expand FWN to rural communities worldwide.
2. DESCRIPTION Food Wide Net is a realistic web-based simulation of the food system of a rural community. Initially, the community can be chosen within a given set of different scenarios. Each community is simulated based on a real counterpart, using real data (geography, demographics, natural resources). These data determine the starting point of the simulation. Additionally, there must be a referent non-profit organization or local equivalent active in the community (Real Contact).
Categories and Subject Descriptors Economic and social development; Education and dissemination
The player manages the food system by controlling the resources, establishing the food production methods and regulating distribution and trade. The in-game goal is to maximize a final score determined by the environmental, social and financial development of the community reached by the end of the simulation. The player faces several challenges, which are environmental (e.g, drought, pollution, disease) or socioeconomic (e.g., land-grabbing, volatile food prices, migration). Some of the challenges are location-specific, and represent scenarios on which the Real Contact actively works in the real world (Real Challenges).
Keywords Agriculture, Food value chain, Developing Crowdsourcing, Web-based simulation.
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1. INTRODUCTION: In rural communities, investing in the agricultural sector is the most effective way to alleviate hunger and poverty (AnrĂŹquez 2007). Agricultural development is often achieved thanks to the cooperation between local inhabitants and international organizations. Among those, non-governmental and non-profit organizations rely almost entirely on volunteer work and public donations to stay operational. Such organizations need to raise awareness of the challenges they face and to offer means for potential supporters to contribute to their projects.
During the simulation, the player is given several possibilities to act on Real Challenges:
Educational simulation games are established awareness-raising tools, mainly due to the engagement experienced by the players (Bredemeier and Greenblat 1981). Simulations have been successfully employed to channel donations for non-profit organizations (e.g., Real Lives 2010: www.educationalsimulations.com), and to collect expertise from people around the world, which can then be used to solve complex real world scenarios (e.g., MMOWGLI: portal.mmowgli.nps.edu).
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by purchasing extra content, where earnings are donated to the Real Contact;
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by supporting a project of the Real Contact whenever facing the associated Real Challenge, via both donations or means to be agreed with the Real Contact;
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by detailing ideal solutions to Real Challenges which do not yet have any associated project (i.e., Crowdsourcing).
The player is rewarded in-game whenever acting on a Real Challenge. The Real Contact will provide updates on the status of the real world community and on Real Challenges completion periodically via e.g., a Newsletter.
With our project we set out to create an educational simulation called Food Wide Net (FWN). In FWN the player
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The simulation will be developed using the HTML5.0 engine. It will be hosted on a dedicated “.Org” domain. The Ushaidi opensource platform (www.ushaidi.org) has been identified as a reference for hosting and development partner. Transactions will be carried out by means of Paypal or credit card. Realization costs will be kept low by making the project part of internships and master theses. A Kickstarter campaign will also be launched in parallel; donors will be allowed to propose new content-and development ideas. Once the game is online, maintenance and update costs will be covered with part of the donations. Social networks will be involved to increase visibility, starting with a viral-video campaign.
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS We believe that our project: 1. stimulates awareness of local food production issues; 2. offers visibility to non-profit organizations and makes use of their practical experience; 3. relies and thrives on technology (Web platform, forum, social networks, crowdfunding and crowdsourcing); 4. promotes multicultural interaction 5. encourages the sharing of good practices; 6. combines effectively learning and entertainment; 7. has enormous potential for expansion and development. Once FWN has been created and underway, it will be opensourced, so that everyone can give suggestions, make improvements or create additional content. Ideally, we will expand FWN in different directions by introducing new locations, involving additional non-profit organizations and translating FWN in additional languages, thus creating an invaluable educational tool to compare different realities, and a portal for people to make a tangible contribution to the food production system.
3. APPLICATION AND RESULTS We provide here an example of a possible application: the nonprofit Tulime (www.tulime.org) is our Real Contact for 9 communities in Tanzania, Uganda and Nepal, where it maintains several projects. The community of Pomerini (Tanzania, 8°06’S; 35°46’E) will be our pilot (Fig. 1). Pomerini offers several Real Challenges, among which a high livestock mortality rate. A player facing this Real Challenge could choose to produce disinfection vats, which is a real project from Tulime. The player will receive information on the project and on how to contribute to it via multiple options, with an in-game reward if he does so. Moreover, the player can describe his own solution to reduce livestock mortality. While crowdsourced solutions are not affecting the simulation, they get voted by all the players. The top solutions are submitted to Tulime for evaluation. In this way Tulime receives contributions from expertise and cultural background beyond its immediate reach. The player submitting a top-voted solution receives an in-game reward.
Acknowledgments: We would like to acknowledge Francesco Picciotto, Anna Oggioni and Francesca Pozzi for their support and collaboration through Tulime Onlus, and for providing us much needed material on Pomerini. For their mentoring, we would like to acknowledge Emanuele Ricci, consultant at the French Ministry for Ecology and Sustainable Development, Fabio Ugolini at ETH Zürich and Carlotta Ricci at the Chamber of Commerce of Milan. For his interest in the project and potential partecipation in development support, we acknowledge Nathaniel Manning at Ushaidi.org.
5. REFERENCES [1] Anrìquez,
G. 2007. Rural development and poverty reduction: is agriculture still the key? ESA working paper No. 07-02.
[2] Bredemeier, M. E., Greenblat, C.S. 1981. The educational effectiveness of simulation games. Simulation Gaming no. 12.
Figure 1. Concept user interface, showing a satellite map of Pomerini with its digitized counterpart.
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