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[Hans Lemurson]

Does anybody have any good ideas on ways make Agriculture require more dwarven resources so that it's actually a meaningful consideration in your fortress?

You could introduce blights, like in RimWorld. That could cause famine, if you do not manage it properly. You could base probability of infection on distance to already infected crops; track what crops were planted in a specific plot (real life blights are usually species-specific), so they have to differentiate; make bigger plots more susceptible.

How would that work?  Roll a die every season and then delete a farm plot?  That sounds pretty annoying. 
Now if you were suggesting that I implement (through modding or dfhack scripts) an entirely new crop disease system...well that also sounds like a ton of work.  I'm not trying to add work for ME.

My goal is to think of ideas that work within the existing systems as much as possible.

[PatrikLundell]

If you WERE to modify the game, I believe blights could be implemented by a script that removed the crops on farm plot tiles based on as much logic as you'd like plus random factors. Or just hack the yield (which I assume is stored somewhere, as it's determined by the planter's skill level).

[delphonso]

Set the seed cap to like...15.

[Quietust]

I expect food is meant to rot more often, considering how much you get. Basically it only rots in the workshops now, but stockpiles - even sun-exposed surface stockpiles - basically preserve food forever.

Back in the old 2D versions, meat and fish would slowly decay even in stockpiles, going from "meat" to "xmeatx", then "XmeatX", then "XXmeatXX" (and automatically becoming Refuse), then flat-out vanishing. I don't know when Toady removed that behavior, or why it never happened with plants (though it's pretty clear why he never did that with prepared meals - if he did, all skilled cooks would go insane), but in theory this could be reintroduced using a fairly simple DFHack plugin.

[Urist9876]

Use fertilizer

As you said, farming will yield loads of food. So there is not that much use of fertilizer.
Its main advantage is having larger plant stacks, which will make brewing more efficient.
I guess few actually use it.
So if you want to complicate farming, fertilize all fields.
This might not sit well with the elves though. You will need a lot of ash.

[Hans Lemurson]

So if you want to complicate farming, fertilize all fields.

You misunderstand. I don't want to complicate it.  Why do so many of these suggestions try to make the system harder to use?  It's like I'm talking to a bunch of Dwarf Fortress players or something.

What I do want is for the overproduction of food to be less severe, so that a hobby gardener can't feed a whole city from his backyard in his spare time.

I'm trying to think of easy to implement schemes or restrictions to make farming less OP.
So far I've got:
-Single-season surface farms
-Farm density restrictions
-Deliberately long paths to the farm

The trouble is there seems to be a hard lower limit of 1 plant per tile per season, and dwarves eating 12 plants per year.  But default growth times are fast enough you usually get 2 harvests per season and more than 1 plant per plot, meaning that in practice you'd need just 4-5 tiles per dwarf, even with these restrictions in place.

Are there any crops with a long enough growth time that you can't get more than 1 harvest per season?

[Ulfarr]

-Deliberately long paths to the farm

I would suggest against this one. Long panths would just limit your dwarves leisure time (so less socializing, praying etc) without fixing the problem.

Are there any crops with a long enough growth time that you can't get more than 1 harvest per season?

According to the wiki, there isn't any such plant. Modding the existing ones, should be a fairly easy job though.

[Hans Lemurson]

I just had an idea for decreasing farming yields: Eat only seeds!  That gives you an easy -1 food per tile, so you'll only ever "gain" food from tiles with multiple harvests.  In fact, wiki says you'll only ever get 1-2 seeds per harvest.  Perfect!

Hmm...but how to easily get seeds?  I can't just rely on alcohol production, since that would create WAY more booze than my dwarves drink, especially since most of those seeds will need to be replanted.

I also remember the troubled I had trying to create an oil export business by pressing rock-nuts, and how big a pain it was to have constantly overflowing Spice Barrels and a shortage of Bags.

It's gotta be a crop that can be easily processed into a non-food product.  Maybe the textile crops?  Pig Tails, Hemp, Flax, Cotton.  Maybe I could feed a fortress on Hempseed Press Cakes?  I think I like the sound of press cakes.  It turns the seed into a non-seed food item, which can be kept track of and stored separately.  And then...I guess I turn the excess oil into soap?

-Deliberately long paths to the farm

I would suggest against this one. Long panths would just limit your dwarves leisure time (so less socializing, praying etc) without fixing the problem.

Well, what it would do is make food production require more dwarven time and labor.  It does it by making the dwarves waste their time, but it does simulate the effects of planting/harvesting work being a more time-consuming activity without requiring a lot more work from the player.  Decreased leisure time is a natural consequence of having your work take longer.

Now, I don't want this to kill the FPS, so maybe I'd just build the farms far away from the fort rather than constructing a maze.  Or maybe the mere fact of doing surface-farming on a subterranean fort would be enough.

[DwarfStar]

Just putting your farms far away on the surface will definitely get a few planters in trouble now and then, if there are raids or wild animal attacks.

I think after hearing all the ideas and comparing them with what you’re after, I’d strongly encourage you to consider some light modding. You would just need to pick a crop, find it in the raws, and tune it to the exact productivity you think is interesting. Of course it would take a while to tune the whole lot, but you can just modify the ones you are already using, by modifying the raws in your save folder. (Sometimes that doesn’t work but I suspect it would work here.)

[Thisfox]

From what I can see, what you really are looking for here is some sort of food decay. This means that you can't end up with endless stockpiles of vegetables, greens, grains and fruits from a well situated farm. Making unnecessarily long walks to and from the farms just ruins the rest of the game, and the big wide farms you enjoy, which produce too much food, wouldn't affect your game play as much, as the food would decay before the dorfs could get around to making it into conserves, pickles, and fruit leather and other long-shelf-life food (lavish meals in pots).

[Urist9876]

OP doesnt want to use fertilization, because that is too complex. Op is ok by changing the food chain into milling and pressing. This does not make any sense to me.
OP doesn't like how the current game is. None of the normal game mechanics are to his taste.
This post should go to suggestions or modding thread.

[Urist9876]

To elaborate on this: the OP did not want to use self imposed rules.
So if you have a long walk to farms: use mine cart riding.
If you have fast deteriorating farm produce: build many many kitchens
Almost every self imposed rule can be circumvented by actions like these, so what is the point? Unless you also forbid yourself the use of that.

Getting food in DF is ridiculously easy. To change that you will have to change the game.

[Thunderforge]

I’d suggest upping the GROWDUR value in the raws, which defines how long a plant takes to grow. I think the maximum is 1008. Then change all the season data so every plant only grows in Summer not spring, winter or autumn. Then you should get one crop per year per farm square, I think.

If you want to reduce the haul from plant gathering;
Reducing the clustersize (to 1) will give you less material per harvest from gathering, and frequency will reduce how many of the plants are found.

[Salmeuk]

This post should go to suggestions or modding thread.

I agree with this much, lol I was confused to like, to roleplay or to mod, that is the question here. whoever's in charge around should make the decision. I vote OP as boss..

I remember NW_Kohaku's crazy detailed post about IRL farming mechanics here. I suggest a simple theory: all DF suggestions related to farming can be placed on a scale between, "Make farming harder plzz!!", and, well, Kohaku's above post, and I will term it the Kohaku Spectrum in their honor.

[Hans Lemurson]

To elaborate on this: the OP did not want to use self imposed rules.
So if you have a long walk to farms: use mine cart riding.
If you have fast deteriorating farm produce: build many many kitchens
Almost every self imposed rule can be circumvented by actions like these, so what is the point? Unless you also forbid yourself the use of that.

Getting food in DF is ridiculously easy. To change that you will have to change the game.

No, self-imposed rules are exactly what I'm trying to think of.  They just have to be ones that are aren't a big hassle to implement, and preferably doesn't end up looking stupid. 
"One big annual harvest" is relatively easy to do, (only set the crop for one season), and looks cool when you have a swarm of dwarves running out into the fields to gather potatoes.
"Above-ground only" is also easy, and looks nice with farm fields surrounding your fortress.
"Keep farm density low" is slightly harder, since I have to plan layouts more, and the rocky patches of the surface are annoying.
"Long walks to the farm" is fairly easy, but does start to look stupid since you clearly see everybody walking much longer than they need to.

OP doesnt want to use fertilization, because that is too complex. Op is ok by changing the food chain into milling and pressing. This does not make any sense to me.
OP doesn't like how the current game is. None of the normal game mechanics are to his taste.
This post should go to suggestions or modding thread.

Pressing and Milling can be automated by the Manager, so doesn't create much more work for me.  As far as I know, Fertilization has to be done on a farm-by-farm basis, one at a time, so would be a hassle.  Also it increases the yields (the opposite of what I want) and costs a different resource instead (although wood is also superabundant).

This post should go to suggestions or modding thread.

I agree with this much, lol I was confused to like, to roleplay or to mod, that is the question here. whoever's in charge around should make the decision. I vote OP as boss..

I remember NW_Kohaku's crazy detailed post about IRL farming mechanics here. I suggest a simple theory: all DF suggestions related to farming can be placed on a scale between, "Make farming harder plzz!!", and, well, Kohaku's above post, and I will term it the Kohaku Spectrum in their honor.

I think I could have done a better job of explaining what I was after.  To explore ways you can change how you play and (and still have fun), without having to change the game itself.

Modding opens up a huge can of worms that I'll explore when I find it necessary.