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[ShuangXi]

So far this fort has been the most advanced and successful fort I've built so far.. Almost done with my second year in an embark with 3 terrifying biomes.

However, I've run into a problem I've never run into before.  I cannot keep my fort fed and boozed no matter what I do.  Usually my small farms suffice.  I've never really paid attention to them more than set-and-forget, and for some reason this time everyone is starving.

I have 60 citizens, and the stocks show:

meat: none
fish: none
plant: 3
seeds: 200?
drink: 20?
other: 90?



Are there maybe some farming details I never learned before and got lucky?

Does having more people with the farming labor enabled reduce output maybe?  I think this time I have quite a bit more farmers.

What's the ideal ratio of farmers:farm plots?

I'm pretty sure I have more plots than I need, but every season I keep building more, because every season I have no food.  Now I have 68 plots all of mixed crops.

Would appreciate the help.  The dwarves will also appreciate your help

[ShuangXi]

Well it didn't matter anyway.. my strength was broken by an ambush.  But I would still appreciate the feedback

[Fluoman]

At least 9 tiles of year-round production of plump helmets is needed.
Mixing production on the same farm plot can lead to problems: when you go from one season to the other, all crops not growable during the new season will be lost (and their seeds too).

[kingubu]

Stack size for harvested plants is a function of farming skill and fertilization.  If you have a lot of farmers, they might not be leveling up.  I usually have 5 farmers with "only farmers harvest" and fertilize on.  So I get a lot of food per square.  And legendary farmers in a few years.

Also, a seed stockpile near the plots with bins turned off helps get planting done without as many "cancels plant seed; no garblewarble seeds" messages.

I also grow the other underground and surface crops and have a millstone and farmer's workshop for flour,sugar,leaves. 

My forts always export food for trade goods, so this may be more info than you need.  I just like farming.

[darkflagrance]

Does having more people with the farming labor enabled reduce output maybe?  I think this time I have quite a bit more farmers.

I think this, combined with small plots is the biggest factor. Beginner farmers have a high chance of failing to have anything grow at all from what they plant, and a proficient farmer produces many times what a less experienced farmer can. Few farmers (1-2) and much land (2 9x9 plots) under cultivation is what I do when my fort is starting out with novice farmers.

[Azated]

Two farmers and a single 10x10 plot is enough to provide plump helmets for several hundred dwarves. Try not to mix separate crops in one field, and instead build smaller fields for additional, less important crops.

[Imp]

Note too that not all crops are the same.  Some plants cannot be eaten without further processing, some crops cannot be brewed at all.

Barrels/pots are optional for holding food, but mandatory for holding liquid.

If there's no place to store a plant, it will be harvested but then left in the field - it will rot there.

There's a whole slew of things to check here.  You had a ton of seeds, which suggests that your crops were not rotting in the fields (at least not to a dangerous extent), but you have extremely low levels of both drink stock and raw plants.

That suggests that something happened to your line of production.  Either seeds were not getting planted, or they got planted but something other than storage or brewing happened to them once they were ready for harvest.

You have 90 'other' foods.  Those are usually cooked meals.  Note that if you are cooking raw plants directly, you are destroying those plants' seeds (this doesn't seem to be your problem with around 200 seeds, but without knowing what kinds of seeds you have, and what kinds of plants you've been trying to grow, and the seasons.... harder to check down the list).  Now, you said your fort was 'starving', and with 90 or so cooked meals, this shouldn't be possible - unless those meals were forbidden, present only because of a caravan that hadn't left yet, already rotting, or sealed behind some sort of barrier.

So, things to check if this ever starts to happen again:

Are all my pots/barrels full, so booze cannot be brewed?

Do I have someone working to brew booze?

Do I have steady and ongoing farming of edible and brewable crops?

Are those crops safely reaching a stockroom that is successfully holding all of them?

Am I cooking my raw plants and/or seeds (this is generally something to do with care and attention, or not do at all)

If I am relying on cooking and need plants to be processed for this, are there enough barrels/bags for this processing?

Have I forbidden any/all of my food or seeds anywhere?

Good luck!

[AutomataKittay]

If you need immediate help with farming, a good rule of thumb would be 1 legendary farmer or around 4 beginning farmer to every 25 tiles for plump helmet, year-around. Beginning farmers can support one dwarf per tile with year-around plump helmet and legendary around 3 per tile, without fertilizer and with average harvests. Though that's assuming you're brewing some of them for booze.

Each dwarf eat twice a season and drink four time a season.

Most efficient method of producing foods and drinks I've found is to have quarry bush or sugar pod made into dwarven syrup for food, they outperforms plump helmet rather handily, but need processing and cooking, and either pigtail or plump helmet to brew and hopefully keeping dwarves from eating them.

If you don't mind boozecooking, then brew plump helmet and pigtail, and cook them with a seed to make big stack of food. It can be a bit fiddly, but it's pretty much the maximumal efficiency you can pull off with farming. Animal husbandry is actually worse in term of food acreage to edibles, but can be less fiddly, particularly with birds, and offers leather and bones.

Though judging from your problems, you probably didn't set it to be planted year-around through season settings, or you're having issues with barrels of seeds. Latter's fixable by never using barrels for seed stockpile.

Even beginninger farmers should be able to support a major fortress handily, at least with large fields and some investment into infrastructure ( still and kitchen and stockpiles, really ).

As for your question about ideal farmer to plot ratio, I believe I've mentioned 25 plots to 1 farmer earlier for legendary farmer, you can manage with 40 plots to 1 farmer for anything other than plump helmet and pigtail due to growth length ( It assumes 1 planting a day, though, my farmers can do 3 or 4 a day once they get there, but I prefer to minimumize assumptions ). I'd recommend at least 2 farmer at minimum, and roughly 5 plot for 1 beginninger farmer due to slower planting rate.

[knutor]

If ya can get your hands on the DFcheatsheet.jpg, its a wonderful work flow chart.  That pic has single handedly saved a number of my fortresses in the past.  Also, I've found stockpile mixing to be a bad thing.  After 11years, my fortress has just started hauling gemstones, because I rebuilt the gemstone stockpile.  It had been in a mixed stockpile with food:lye.  The minute I isolated the stockpile, away from a mixed one, the dorfs started collecting and picking up gemstones.  Weird what works sometimes.  This wasn't a major tweak, but it could have been something more important like the prepared meals stockpile.  Never know.  This nested workflow, and stockpile needs a mod or something done to simplify it, it can get way complicated without hardly any effort at all.  Sincerely, Knutor 

[Starver]

Now, you said your fort was 'starving', and with 90 or so cooked meals, this shouldn't be possible - unless those meals were forbidden, present only because of a caravan that hadn't left yet, already rotting, or sealed behind some sort of barrier.

Something you didn't mention (not sure if it's still current, I avoid it anyway) is soldiers with backpacks claiming a food item, nibbling it (or a bit from a stack), not relinquishing 'ownership', but then leaving it on the floor (unable to be eaten by any other dwarf) and going to claim another item to repeat the process with... or something like that.

Either way, flasks-but-no-backpacks is my standard military setting, due to this apparently being a problem.  Details readily available elsewhere, I'm sure.  Up to and including an "I fixed that!" thing by Toady, if I'm out of date.


I habitually set up six underground fields, one exclusively for each crop type (and a suitable number for above-ground seeds to use, as available).  The fields are 3z3 or 3x5 or 5x5, depending on what I do and even without optimal use I can support 200 dwarves.  I don't tend to have problems with food these days (unless I get distracted by a megaproject) but I was not always such, hence my forum name.  (I 'learnt' when found my chosen embark to be an aquifer-based soil-only embark, with just one safely mineable bit of rock substrate, and (at that time) no knowledge of how to get through aquifer-rock without pumps (and the one bit of stone I had was too few for the ancillary equipment needed).  I did a lot of farming, in that embark. )