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[AchooBlessYou]

I have four dwarves working the fields full time, and yet my fields only ever have a few plants planted at one time. I have a seed stockpile next to the fields as well. Am I doing something wrong or is the speed of farming really that dependent on skill level? (I have one high skilled dwarf, one medium, and two low skilled dwarves.)

[i2amroy]

Do you have enough seeds for them to plant? Later on in the fortresses often I've found that I'm producing more food then my dwarves are eating, so all of my food is tied up in plants instead of seeds.

[Particleman]

How many seeds do you have?

Do your planters have any other labors enabled? Planting isn't a very high priority job.

[AchooBlessYou]

I currently have 200 of each of the crop I am trying to plant, so I don't think that is the problem. 

They only have planting enabled.

[AchooBlessYou]

Is there a way to make it so farmers don't collect the grown crops, but instead have someone else collect them? I think that would probably help speed planting up.

[greycat]

Is there a way to make it so farmers don't collect the grown crops, but instead have someone else collect them? I think that would probably help speed planting up.

I don't think you can.  But:

• You should put a plant stockpile very close to the farms, with barrels disabled, so the harvesters don't have to move the plants very far.
• Harvesting is actually a two-step process.  Someone harvests the crop, which removes the crop from that tile of the farm plot (so another seed can be planted) and leaves a stack of plants sitting on the tile.  Then someone moves that stack of plants to the nearest food stockpile with space available.  The two jobs are not always done by the same person.  So... if you disable food hauling on the farmers, maybe they'll skip the second part?  I don't know if that actually works in practice.

[WealthyRadish]

Your farmers will still be the ones to bring it to the stockpile, even without food hauling on. They may be wasting time getting a barrel for each plant stack, though, so have a nearby stockpile that doesn't have any barrels and takes from anywhere, and have it give to the main stockpile. Plants'll build up in the intermediate pile, then some hauler will come along and scoop them all up rapidly in a barrel for the main stockpile. It's actually more efficient than before the hauling change, which is nifty.

Are you using barrels in your seed stockpile, and getting cancellation spam? That may slow things down as well.

[AchooBlessYou]

Your farmers will still be the ones to bring it to the stockpile, even without food hauling on. They may be wasting time getting a barrel for each plant stack, though, so have a nearby stockpile that doesn't have any barrels and takes from anywhere, and have it give to the main stockpile. Plants'll build up in the intermediate pile, then some hauler will come along and scoop them all up rapidly in a barrel for the main stockpile. It's actually more efficient than before the hauling change, which is nifty.

Are you using barrels in your seed stockpile, and getting cancellation spam? That may slow things down as well.

I'll try building an intermediate stock pile.

And no, I have barrels disabled in my seed stockpile.

[WJLIII3]

If you disable "all dwarves gather" in your (o) rders menu, only dwarves with Plant Gathering should gather

[AchooBlessYou]

If you disable "all dwarves gather" in your (o) rders menu, only dwarves with Plant Gathering should gather

Is there a way to do the opposite? I'd like for my farmers to only plant seeds and have other dwarves gather the plants.

[WealthyRadish]

If you disable "all dwarves gather" in your (o) rders menu, only dwarves with Plant Gathering should gather

Um, no, that's the herblism skill for gathering wild plants.

Farmers will always pick crops at least some of the time. It's usually better to have them be the only ones harvesting, as they'll gain experience from doing so, whereas having any random idler gain that experience is useless. More experienced planters will get higher crop yields, improving efficiency significantly.

[Garath]

that may be another issue. Your farmer may be low skilled and take a long time per seed

keeping "all dwarfs gather" on when there are some children means 9 out of 10 times it is one of them that goes to collect the plant. By the time a child born at the fort grows up he'll be close to legendary farmer.

[AchooBlessYou]

I started a new fort with the updated farming designs. They seem to be doing a much better job keeping the plots full. Thanks for everyone's help!