This book is about the business of farmers producing and marketing agricultural products.

The content of this book represents another step in an evolutionary process spanning four decades. In 1971 the late Jack Makeham wrote his original textbook Farm Management Economics. In 1981, Jack Makeham and Bill Malcolm wrote the original The Farming Game. This was followed in 1993 by The Farming Game Now. In 2005, Vic Wright has teamed up with Bill Malcolm (and Jack Makeham) to produce this 21st-century version of The Farming Game.

There has been a central and constant philosophy in all of these books, with emphases changing as the world has changed and the views and understandings of the authors have evolved and grown. The central, constant philosophy underpinning all of these works is that economic ways of thinking are at the heart of the interdisciplinary activity known as farm management analysis, and are central to understanding the processes involved in the risky caper of managing farm businesses. Ironically, having economics as the core discipline only works for farm management analysis if practitioners emphasise first the non-economic – the human and technical – parts of farm management. Starting with the farm family and mastering the technology is the pathway to sound farm management economic analysis, and the foundations of the approach taken in this book.

Over time, the farming game has changed, and so have emphases in content of The Farming Game.