Who knew?  According to Inside Social Games, farming games are the most popular games on Chinese social networks, and they’re starting to gain more steam on Facebook now too.

You can build, plow, plant, grow and sell crops in these games, creating virtual farms in the tradition of The Sims.

In the last month, Farmville has grown from 9 million to over 20 million users, ranking among the top 5 applications in terms of user growth.  At the same time, Farm Town isn’t far behind, growing from 6 to over 16 million users in the past 90 days. (Inside Facebook)

There’s also myFarm which doesn’t have the same number of users – but add their 1.5 million to the other two games and there are about 37 million people who play farm games on Facebook.  (If anyone has information about these games on Chinese social networks, I’d love to learn more!)

A commenter on the Inside Social Games post writes: Perhaps signifying our repressed longing to connect to a more physical world, virtual farming is all the rage.

Is it a longing to reconnect with the physical world?  Is it a passing fad,  as implied by articles such as New York Mag’s piece on The Farmer as Cult Hero?

I don’t play these online games, but I’m hopeful that their popularity is a sign of the growing awareness of farmers as people who feed us, and a desire to understand and connect with our food sources.

Anyone playing these games who wants to weigh in?