Farmers' Union
The Farmers' Union is a system that runs alongside your farming and rewards regular activity with its own levels, tasks and a team of characters carrying permanent bonuses. Every level unlocks new tasks, a daily chest with better contents and a chance to gain or upgrade a member of your union team. Anyone who plays regularly will find out sooner or later that even a few extra minutes a day pay off in this system over the long run.
I see the Farmers' Union as a side track running next to classic farming, rewarding but not demanding, it costs no extra time, only regularity, and the rewards in the form of team characters and better chests add up across the whole game. Skip days and you lose points as well as the better daily chest, so it is worth dropping into the union every day, even if only for a moment.
The Farmers' Union rewards regular play with its own level system
The Farmers' Union is a separate progression system, independent of your farmer level. Every level you reach brings new union tasks and rewards, and among them are new members of the union team, who add permanent bonuses that keep working throughout the game once you put them on the team.
Progress happens in the background of normal play. You complete the tasks through ordinary work on the farm, and you collect points daily without having to buy anything.
You reach the next level by finishing tasks and collecting union points
To move up to the next union level you need to meet two conditions at the same time, finish all the union tasks on your current level and fill the union point bar next to the level indicator. Finished tasks without enough points, or the other way round, are not enough to advance.
The task overview shows how many of the total tasks on that level are done, so you always see what is still missing. An unfinished task from a lower level does not disappear, you can go back and catch up on it using the button for the previous union level.
Free union points grow the more regularly you come for them
Besides the points from tasks, the Farmers' Union also hands out free union points every day. How many you get does not depend on luck or on buying anything, but on how many times in the last 7 days you stopped by for them, the more days in the week you collect them, the bigger the daily allowance, up to a set maximum. The game also remembers whether you skipped the reward yesterday or several days ago.
This is exactly the mechanic that makes it worth not forgetting. Even a single gap during the week can knock the daily reward noticeably back down and you only build it back up gradually, day by day.
The free daily chest gets better as your union level rises
Alongside the points, a free union chest is waiting for you every day. Its contents are not fixed, they depend on the union level you have reached, so the higher you climb, the more valuable the daily haul from the chest becomes.
Reaching a new level also brings up special level-up offers, bundles tied to one particular union level that you can buy, and once bought they stay with that level marked as already taken.
The union team adds characters with permanent bonuses
The most valuable part of the Farmers' Union, in my opinion, is the union team. New characters for it come as rewards for completing selected tasks, and once a character is on the team, it works forever, not just for the duration of a reward. The overview of all characters shows for each one whether it is already on the team, whether you can unlock it right now, or whether it is still waiting behind a higher union level.
Apart from new characters, progress in the union can also raise the level of a character you already have on the team and make its bonus stronger. That is why it pays to watch the notifications about a new union level, it is easy to miss that it is an upgrade to an existing member rather than a newcomer.
Veteran farmers get a one-time reward for their account history
Players who were farming in Big Farm before the Farmers' Union was added to the game are entitled to a one-time veteran farmer reward. Its size is calculated from the year the account was registered and from the player's current level, so older, more developed accounts typically get more out of it.
The reward does not unlock right away, the account shows the number of days until it opens up. It is a one-time thing, once you claim it the overview simply marks it as collected and it is never offered again.
