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Bryan Jones maintains strong ties to the land and teaches reading at McCook Junior High School in McCook, Nebraska. His articles have appeared in New Farm, New Land Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and other magazines. In a new afterword, he discusses the current status of "the farming game.""A former high school teacher turned Nebraska farmer himself, Jones has drawn on his . . . experience to write a lively, practical guide to success or, more often, failure in small farming. What distinguishes The Farming Game from a mere how-to book is the author's sharp eye for the absurd detail in his portraits of people and his descriptions of the lending policies of banks, the government price controls and the production methods of agribusiness that make it difficult for the independent farmer to compete."—<i>New York Times Book Review</i> "Bryan Jones is that rare thing, a real farmer who also writes. The Farming Game is the one book I've seen . . . that I would give to someone who was thinking of moving to the country and actually supporting himself or herself off the land. . . . Anyone who picks it up [won't be able to] stop laughing. First at the dozen portraits of different types of farmers. . . .Then at various barbed asides in the three long essays on how farmers can and do make money. . . . Jones has a wicked wit. [And his] book is remarkably educative. Mixed with the humor is a mass of information and analysis. . . . The reality of farming is here as other people very seldom see it."—Noel Perrin, <i>Smithsonian</i>
His keen-eyed sketches of farmers at work show the variety of ways a farmer may succeed or fail. Even his own neighborhood, dominated by thousands of acres of corn and high technology, is peopled with "scalper" who makes a living in the cattle business with little more stake than a gooseneck trailer, a telephone, and his native wits; the sheep man who secretly grows rich while looking poor and raising an animal that other farmer disdain; the experimenter who never turns a nickel himself, but whose successful innovations are readily adopted by his neighbors; the hog raiser who makes a large family pay.
The heart of the book is the primer for novices—and for city folk who dream of farming. Jones emphasizes the practicalities of farm finance and recommends sidelines for the beginner—welding, giving guitar lessons, keeping the books for a local elevator—as an alternative to starving. He urges newcomers to start small and to be sure that farming is something they really want to do. To interested bystanders, The Farming Game offers one farmer's audacious, stimulating, and entertaining view of American agriculture today.