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[rex mortis]

A farmer goes to harvest a ripe crop. Then he leaves it on the ground and goes to fetch a barrel from my food stockpile. He comes back with the barrel, puts the plants in and takes the barrel back to the stockpile. Why don't they just take the plants to the stockpile? As it stands, my dwarves have to make two extra trips between plots and food stockpiles, which eats a lot of time my farmers could spend harvesting other plants.

Does anybody have solutions to speed things up?

[Urist McMontros]

Apparently it's due to, from what I've heard, a recent update that makes Urist McHauler prefer picking up items with its corresponding Bin/Barrel/Bag.

Especially annoying when your farmers are constantly sending out job cancellation messages because Urist decided to take the only bag full of seeds away from the stockpile to pick up a plump helmet spawn from the dining room.

Maybe separate Farmers and Haulers? Make it so that your Farmers only farm (plant seeds, harvest) and dedicate a couple of guys to haul the crops over to the stockpile.

[Dwarfotaur]

Crops are collected by any one with hauling, not farmers. Farmers strictly plant. Essentially a fully grown plant just places an item of food on the spot it grew.

The reason for them bringing a barrel is that a recent addition to actually cut down hauling tasks was implemented: A dwarf will grab an items container and then pick up multiple items in one trip and carry the container back. However, it doesn't seem to work so well with farms due to the fact that they do not all grow at once (as a dwarf must plant it one at a time). I'm sure if the farms somehow spawned all the fully grown products at once, a dwarf would zip around with a barrel and collect all of it at once.

Personally it's a fair trade off. As now a single dwarf can do a task in the fraction of the time that used to take 20 dwarves much longer.

[Mushroo]

Turn off barrels on the relevant stockpile; problem solved.

I also recommend changing the settings to (o)rders, only farmers (h)arvest, as this will mean more experience for your planters (and fewer dwarves competing to harvest those plants).

[Lich180]

I have my farmers set as the only ones to harvest, then have a plant stockpile with no barrels separating the plots with another plant stockpile elsewhere with barrels. What usually happens is a farmer picks a crop, deposits it in the stockpile (or leaves it in the plot) and a hauler grabs a barrel and vacuums up the plants.

Shamelessly stole the idea from someone else here, and it works pretty good.

[Psieye]

My overly complicated solution to this is to use a short minecart track in-between the no-barrel and barrel-using plant stockpiles. Farmers harvest (with no hauling) and drop onto the no-barrel pile. A hauler comes over and picks up that harvest and puts it in the minecart. Later, the minecart moves to its destination (one tile away) where the haulers show up with barrels and put everything inside at once. Because the barrel-using pile is linked to the minecart route, it is forbidden to have plants dropped on it by haulers unless they specifically come from that minecart.

[FlavorCat]

Turn off barrels on the relevant stockpile; problem solved.

Food items not in a container can be destroyed by vermin though, and flies can't be killed by cats.

[Mushroo]

Turn off barrels on the relevant stockpile; problem solved.

Food items not in a container can be destroyed by vermin though, and flies can't be killed by cats.

Read Lich180 and Psieye's posts for the solution.

Although if losing a few plump helmets to vermin is going to make or break your fortress, you're doing it wrong.

[i2amroy]

Turn off barrels on the relevant stockpile; problem solved.

Food items not in a container can be destroyed by vermin though, and flies can't be killed by cats.

Set up a dual stockpile. The one closest to the farm doesn't have containers and takes plants, and then gives to the stockpile next to it. The one next to it that accepts containers, and only takes from links (make sure you have it take from a barrel stockpile as well!). The end result is that farmers will harvest food and drop it on the first stockpile, at which point someone will carry it to the second stockpile and stuff it in a barrel.

[hiroshi42]

Turn off barrels on the relevant stockpile; problem solved.

Food items not in a container can be destroyed by vermin though, and flies can't be killed by cats.

Read Lich180 and Psieye's posts for the solution.

Although if losing a few plump helmets to vermin is going to make or break your fortress, you're doing it wrong.

This.  I never use barrels in my food-only stockpiles, generally so I don't need a dedicated potmaker to keep an adequate amount of booze. 

If you are really worried about vermin either outproduce them or pasture some male cats on each foodpile.