Farm team

In sports, a farm team, farm system, feeder team or nursery club, is generally a team or club whose role is to provide experience and training for young players, with an agreement that any successful players can move on to a higher level at a given point. This system can be implemented in many ways, both formally and informally.

The term is also used as a metaphor for any organization or activity that serves as a training ground for higher-level endeavors. For instance, sometimes business schools are referred to as "farm clubs" for the world of business.

Contracted farm teams

Baseball

In the United States and Canada, Minor League Baseball teams operate under strict franchise contracts with their major league counterparts. Although the vast majority of such teams are privately owned and are therefore able to switch affiliation, those players under contract with the affiliated Major League Baseball team are under their exclusive control, and would move to the MLB club's new affiliate. Not all players on a minor league team are under contract with the MLB club; however, the parent club has the exclusive right to "purchase" the contract of a non-contract player at its affiliate.

Farm

A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used for specialised units such as arable farms, vegetable farms, fruit farms, dairy, pig and poultry farms, and land used for the production of natural fibres, biofuel and other commodities. It includes ranches, feedlots, orchards, plantations and estates, smallholdings and hobby farms, and includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land. In modern times the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms, both of which can operate on land or sea.

Farming originated independently in different parts of the world as hunter gatherer societies transitioned to food production rather than food capture. It may have started about 12,000 years ago with the domestication of livestock in the Fertile Crescent in western Asia, soon to be followed by the cultivation of crops. Modern units tend to specialise in the crops or livestock best suited to the region, with their finished products being sold for the retail market or for further processing, with farm products being traded around the world.

Team

A team is a group of people or other animals linked in a common purpose. Human teams are especially appropriate for conducting tasks that are high in complexity and have many interdependent subtasks.

A group does not necessarily constitute a team. Teams normally have members with complementary skills and generate synergy through a coordinated effort which allows each member to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Naresh Jain (2009) claims:

Team members need to learn how to help one another, help other team members realize their true potential, and create an environment that allows everyone to go beyond his or her limitations. Teams can be broken down into from a huge team or one big group of people, even if these smaller secondary teams are temporary.

A team becomes more than just a collection of people when a strong sense of mutual commitment creates synergy, thus generating performance greater than the sum of the performance of its individual members.

Thus teams of game players can form (and re-form) to practise their craft/sport. Transport logistics executives can select teams of horses, dogs, or oxen for the purpose of conveying passengers or goods.

Farm Frenzy

Farm Frenzy is a series of downloadable casual games for the PC developed by Melesta and published by Alawar Entertainment. The series utilizes a point-and-click arcade gameplay model that enables the player to manage the production processes on a farm using a mouse.

Gameplay

The goal in a Farm Frenzy game is to raise animals, process the goods they produce and sell the products for cash. To raise animals, the player must regularly water the grass they eat. A well with a limited capacity supplies the water and costs money to refill. Once the player buys an animal, the animal starts eating grass and dropping goods for the player to pick up. For example, chickens lay eggs, sheep produce wool and cows produce milk. The goods the player picks up are stored in a warehouse with limited capacity. From there, the player may either sell the goods by having a truck transport them to town or turn them into more valuable goods using a specific processing facility.

Predators such as bears sometimes appear on the farm. The player must cage them by quickly and repeatedly clicking on them; otherwise, the predators will toss the other animals off the farm and destroy any goods lying on the ground. In addition to purchasing animals that produce goods, the player can also buy cats and dogs. Cats collect goods that lie on the ground, while dogs chase down predators and prevent them from doing harm. Farm Frenzy 2 introduced an airplane the player can send to town to purchase items the player can't produce on the farm, such as ingredients needed to produce more valuable goods.