Pest Friends: An Educational Pest Management Game

Pest Friends is an educational strategy board game designed to help youth and adults understand the principles of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), an ecosystem-based approach for managing pests and the damage they cause within economic thresholds. The game is designed to allow players to explore the different facets of IPM and how they affect a crop and species living within it. This is done through a facilitator-led simulation where players make decisions that ultimately lead to a unique outcome based on their choices. The facilitator carries out the effects of a player’s action within its scenario while players make decisions as pest managers contending with pests in an agricultural field or similar setting. Their role as managers is to keep pests in check and minimize the amount of damage done to a crop while using their time and money efficiently. Each game consists of eight rounds. At the end of a game, players tally points based on their crop yield and the amount of money they have collected/earned. The game can be played with multiple scenarios, but this set only comes with Scenario 1: Lunar Wheat. —description from the designer