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[lorb]

I am training a herbalist in plant gathering but it takes way too long because every time he harvest a plant he runs of with it to store it in my food stockpile which is miles away. I turned off every hauling labor on him but it doesn't seem to stop him from doing it.

[Garath]

gathering the plants includes bringing them to a place to store tham. Have you tried making a storage there and set it to no barrels and only accepting the plants and such he might be gathering?

[Sphalerite]

Disable storage of the plants he's gathering in your food stockpile.  If there's nowhere for him to leave the plants, he'll just leave them where they were gathered.

[Mushroo]

Disable storage of the plants he's gathering in your food stockpile.  If there's nowhere for him to leave the plants, he'll just leave them where they were gathered.

And then they will wither and die.

Sounds like the OP needs a centralized stockpile (near the gate or something) for outdoor plants, so the herbalist doesn't need to walk as far.

Or better yet, build a walled-in farm plot.

[Bilanthri]

Burrows would also fix this. With a small stockpile within the burrow, said harvester would only move between the plants and the internal stockpile, allowing other dwarves to come haul the stuff deeper into the fortress. If you mark the main stockpile to take from the small in-burrow pile, then the harvester will still stay within the burrow, but anything brought to the small pile will immediately create a job to haul it to the main one, and some other dwarf will come perform the task.

[Mushroo]

Also it is worth mentioning that if you build an outdoor kitchen and cook your prickle berries into lavish prickle berry roasts near point-of-harvest, then you will reduce your hauling jobs by a factor of 4.

[Nidokoenig]

Burrows will not fix this, unless they've been improved in the VD update. The herbalist will grab the plant, then start pissing and moaning about being unable to access the stockpile he's chosen without regard for burrows or proximity. The best method, from what I've tried, is to put plant stockpiles behind doors so that the herbalist can only physically access the desired stockpile.

The real solution is to wall off the surface into manageable chunks, so you can seal herbalists and wood cutters inside specific sectors to strip them, then have the haulers empty the stockpile.

[Bilanthri]

Ahh, I didn't realize that burrows were as broken as all that. I'd been recently trying to sort out the problem of having burrowed craftdwarves with all hauling jobs disabled still get hung up when trying to drop a barrel of brew when the pile they grabbed it from is now full due to the tireless work of my haulers.

Damn...and here I thought burrows were the solution to just about everything.

[Werdna]

I'd use Sphalerite's suggestion, let the herbalist pluck for awhile, then temporarily and periodically turn Plants back on in the Food stockpile.  Your population should rush out and collect all the plants that haven't gone bad yet, and at worst you suffer a single run-back by the herbalist on the next herb he plucks while the pile is active.  Assuming you even want to keep some of the benefits of his skilling up; I think the main reason to skill up an Herbalist is specifically to create large plant bundles (ie whip vine[5]) for brewing barrels of booze[25], instead of cluttering the booze pile with barrels of booze[5].

[Mushroo]

If that is your goal then replace the herbalist with a potash maker. A legendary Grower with potash fertilizer will easily turn out whip vine [5] and as big as whip vine [9] yielding whip wine [45]. All you need is a dabbling herbalist to bring back a single specimen so you can begin the breeding program.

[Werdna]

If that is your goal then replace the herbalist with a potash maker. A legendary Grower with potash fertilizer will easily turn out whip vine [5] and as big as whip vine [9] yielding whip wine [45]. All you need is a dabbling herbalist to bring back a single specimen so you can begin the breeding program.

The problem then is getting a Grower to Legendary!  That can take ages normally, unless you luck into a migrant.  An Herbalist can be skilled up pretty rapidly right from embark, in certain biomes.  But an excellent alternative, and I may just reconsider ignoring Potash...

[Nidokoenig]

You can get a grower to legendary in less than a year, provided you give them enough work, turn off all other labours and make harvesting farmers only. Herbalist is useful for above ground plants or seedless plants, but growers will make bigger stacks than a herbalist can almost straight away.

[lorb]

Thank you all for your input
I used a combinational strategy
(putting a food stockpile near the harvesting zone and occasionally allow the storage of the plants there)

[peskyninja]

Remember that food doesn't rot when it's placed on a stockpile, even without a container.