there's this game called The Farming Game that is hilarious. i think it's from the 70s or 80s. a game might last 40 minutes. the board looks like monopoly, but it isn't at all. and, as someone who has been in US agriculture for like 15+ years, it feels so real. it basically shows you how completely risky it all is, and that critical resources / means of production are locked behind seemingly random social connections and gossip. like if you have the money to buy some specific piece of equipment, you can't buy it unless you have a card giving you the option to buy. that is something that you might randomly draw from a stack, or someone might sell/trade it to you. it's all very "yeah, i know a guy who is looking to sell one of those. i can introduce you. or not." you can obscure your cards and your money too if you want, or be open with everything.

you don't swallow up people's farms. you're basically just trying to amass a net worth of a certain amount, including cash, land, equipment, that all have fixed appraisal values. you have to keep your number in mind and estimate where others are at constantly. when you think you've got enough, you call for a sale... if you have over the amount, you win. if you fall short, you get penalized like some fat number for creating a "market panic" or something like that.

anyway, the real funny stuff is just how stacked the game is against everyone ever getting anywhere. you start in the hole to the bank for like 25% of the book value of the farm you inherited (basically you take on an operating loan). like 80% of random events ("Farmer's Fate") go against you. shit weather. insect eating your crops. tree takes out fence, cows got out. injure yourself. equipment breaks. fucked up your taxes, hire accountant. there are dozens of cockups. you can take on subsidized debt to stay in operation up to a point, but the terms still suck. you always end up paying back 20% more than you borrowed. some random events absolute hose people with outstanding debts. there are so many years where you make it through the year and you basically paid like $500 for the pleasure of farming. you even have some shitty job "in town" to make a little scratch in the off season, which you immediately sink into your farm, of course. when i was a farmworker IRL i would play it with other farmworker friends in winter and we all cracked up constantly, because it is such a shitshow.

but all you really need is for everything to go right and have an absolute banger of a year or two, and you can cash out and retire to never farm again, which is its own hilarious win condition for people who love aspects of the work but are constantly teetering on the edge of material ruin.

you don't have to know shit about crops or anything. it's all explained and mostly about trying to run a risky set of enterprises. 2 players is doable, but 3+ is more and more fun. everybody i pressured to play it ran out and immediately bought it after a game to show others.

edit: lol, i looked it up. apparently the World Bank had it translated into Russian in 1994 to show them what farming was like under a capitalistic system (spoiler alert: it sucks). too bad they didn't do that 10 years earlier.