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[smjjames]

Also, I find that an underground farm can support a good number of dwarves, but once you get above like 60 or so, I find that it becomes difficult to supply a good amount of food. So, once I get an outdoor farming area set up, the food comes in abundance.

In short,  get an outdoor farming area set up (either wall off an area or channel off the roof of a chamber that is just underground) and you should have a good supply of plant foods.

As others have said, take advantage of abundant local resources like meat and fish. Coastlines can be especially bountiful, although I seem to have a tendency to get bat rays and shellfish (mussels and oysters) even though I've seen other fish types swiming around.

[Albedo]

The hardest part is continually processing enough plants for the seeds - I seem to end up with more and more food that I can't eat.  End up trading away the "reject" meals, same as any lower quality product like furniture.

[smjjames]

I'm usually find myself cluttered with lots of seeds....

In any case, it's not that hard to get to a point where you definetly won't be running out of food, it just takes a while to get it set up. Having access to alternate sources helps and caravans will bring tons of food if you ask for it. Unless you are in a hostile environment like a freezing biome where you would only be able to grow underground foods or some other hostile place.

Incidentially, you can still set up a farming oasis in a desert where your dwarves are much more likely to die of thirst than hunger.

[Derakon]

SMJJames: unless the aboveground crops have unusually short growing cycles, they shouldn't be any more productive than the belowground ones. In fact, most of them can't be processed for multiplicative bonuses (like sweet pods -> dwarven syrup x5, or quarry bushes -> quarry bush leaves x5), which means you'd actually be getting less food out, assuming you don't cook booze.

That said, the extra variety is always handy.

[Zancor Mezoran]

Also, I feel that I should comment that having 15 farmers isn't all that bad, if you have enough seeds for them to plant and enough farms for all the various crops.  I generally have 1-2 full-time brewers, 4 full-time millers and 3 full-time threshers, plus I buy out the seeds from every caravan.  That coupled with the fact that I have multiple large plots for plump helmets, dimple cups, and pig tails, and 2 10x10 above-ground farms rotating crops each season so that I can grow all or nearly every human crop as well.  My 15 farmers are nearly constantly at work, and I don't mind the lower crop yields from the newbies when they get turned back into seeds so quickly by the rest of my workers, and can be planted again very quickly.

[eerr]

I'm having a food crises and I can't figure out why! I need some tips/help on how I can repair this problem, here is some information.

Food Stocks...
Meat: None:
Fish: None
Plant: None

Population: 61
Designated Farmers: 15
Plump Helmets: 126 tiles
Quarry Bush: About 50 tiles

An untrained peasant can't even grow food for himself, let alone others.

Quarry bush leaves(processed from the quarry bush at the farmer's workshop) need cooking into meals, at the kitchen

Try gathering herb bushes (like woodcutting, without the axe)
Or hunting (set the labor, plus s to set the weapon to a crossbow)
untill your farmers become experianced.

note that legendary farmers can supply upwards of 50 dwarves, because they work 7 times faster, and 7 times more effective.

[Albedo]

A bit of an afterthought, but I found this on the wiki and it made me think of this discussion. 

I hadn't actually thought about exactly how important a skilled grower is vs unskilled, but this highlights it - altho' a stack of "5" is perhaps a bit optimistic, the multiplier effect is still quite powerful:

(...Higher skill levels have) the effect of a multiplier on several labors, and also of making storage more efficient.  For example, brewing five stacks of plump helmet(1) requires five visits to farm plot to store them in stockpiles, five trips to the still, five trips to haul five barrels, five brewing tasks, and will make five "stacks" of dwarven wine[5]', requiring five separate barrels stored on five separate tiles. 

On the other hand, a single stack of plump helmet[5] can be brewed into one "stack" of dwarven wine[25], using a single barrel, hauled away in one task, and stored on a single tile.  High-skilled growers can potentially save 20* trips/tasks per single plant product, making your fort significantly more efficient. 

'(* 5 to harvest, 5 for the still, 5 for barrels, 5 brewing, 5 hauling = 25 tasks, vs 1 each = 5.)

[Frogeyes]

I had a food crisis on a fairly large fort of mine recently that was basically the result of me not paying close enough attention to my food industry.

 You probably know all this, but I'm going to run through the food sources available to you and the processes involved:

 Plump Helmets: planted, harvested, eaten. You can also cook or brew them, of course.

 Quarry Bushes: must be planted and harvested, then processed to a bag by a thresher (plant processing labour) at a farmer's workshop, then cooked at a kitchen (uses the "cooking labour").

 Meat: Dead, butcherable animals can be butchered or live, tame animas can be designated for slaughter. Both requires the butcher's shop and a dwarf with the butchery labour enabled. The meat can be cooked or eaten raw; the fat produced by a butcher's shop can be processed into tallow at a Kitchen, with the Cooking labour, then cooked. Hunting is a good way to provide food IF you don't have dangerous animals; otherwise, hunters tend to get killed.

 Fish must be caught and cleaned at a fishery, by a dwarf with the fishcleaning labour.

 So, now you need to figure out why none of this is happening quickly enough. The number of plump helmets you have designated, with the number of farmers, should be enough to feed your fortress all on its own. Keep an eye growers are doing their jobs and not getting distracted. The same goes for all the other dwarves involved in food production. Keep an eye all the relevant workshops as well, to see if the job is available and if that little green "a" is there; if the job isn't getting done, find out why.

 To sustain your fortress in the meantime, find something your dwarves can eat NOW. Animals that can be butchered, seeds (especially outdoor seeds, if you aren't interested in farming them) can be cooked. If you have raw fish, make sure they get prepared.