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[Jurph]

I've been experimenting with packing together the workflows for my farmers to minimize the length of hauling trips, and I've got a 25 x 35 tile area broken into 35 parcels of 5x5 tiles each.  Each 5x5 has either a 5x5 farm (with crop rotation), or a 3x3 workshop centered in a ring of feeder piles, or a 5x5 stockpile.  Right now the farms are in two corners, a stairwell leading down into my legendary dining hall is in the center, and the rest of the room is thick with stockpiles for empty barrels, seeds, processed foods, and so on.

I've got a still diagonal from the farm, spitting seeds back next to the field and using plants that come out of the farm.  The kitchens are surrounded by meat and fish stocks (they creep off their 5x5 to include walls and doors for miasma prevention), processed plants (syrup, leaves) and milled plants (flour).  I have the north farm cranking out "barrel plants" (sweet pods for syrup in one season and then 3 seasons of booze crops) and the south farm on "bag plants" (quarry bush leaves, pig tails for making bags, cave wheat for flour, and either dimple cups or plump helmets in winter to boost booze reserves).  The south half is dominated by a thread-and-bag production area; the north half includes a butcher's shop.

Last but not least I've ringed the layout in 5x5 earth-walled rooms for my farmers, with a typical bed/cabinet/coffer allocation to each.  Knowing which room is closest to the still lets me decide ahead of time how to meet my brewer's preferences (would he prefer a particular kind of bag to a stone coffer, for example).  Later on I can either dig out the walls and replace them with mahogany paneling or stone blocks - to each owner's tastes - or I can install walls in the rooms and shrink them to 3x3.

Has anyone else had success with short-trip or tightly-packed farming arrangements like this?  Are there plants that are a "sucker's bet" that I'm stupidly sticking with?  Also: if my farming arrangement is so darn efficient, why does my kitchen still have miasma coming out of it every few weeks?

[beorn080]

That sounds like a pretty effective setup.

Regarding the miasma. You need more dedicated food haulers. The prepared food is rotting from no one putting it into a stockpile. Make sure you have a big enough food stockpile to accept it all and remember that any meal bigger then 20 won't fit into a barrel.

[Fossaman]

Remember that vertical space is more efficient than horizontal: A central stairwell and a few levels of smaller rooms will cut down on travel quite a bit versus a large, spread out horizontal space.

[DJ_Muffinman]

Remember that vertical space is more efficient than horizontal: A central stairwell and a few levels of smaller rooms will cut down on travel quite a bit versus a large, spread out horizontal space.

Agreed. Your idea sounds very well-tought out, but instead of having the kitchens/stills/etc next to the stockpiles and farms, have them all on three deifferent levels. On one "central level" could be the farms, and next to the farms there should be a stairway that leads to the stockpile and the workshop. This is all tentative though. It could be:

Workshops
Farm
Stockpile
or any other combination.  Get creative. =3

[jester]

Jesus how much food do you need?  with 100 dwarf cap I seem to end up only farming 1 season in about 5 by year 4.  I just trade for the rest.  Way I see it though if everone is harvesting then walking to the farm is bigger than the walk to the stockpile, as long as the farm is pretty central you shoulnt have too many problems. I usually use a crew of about 6 brewers/threshers/cooks/food haulers then a few butcher/tanners/food haulers to pick up the slack. Like beorn said if you are getting rotting in your food processing area the problem isnt with travel times its that you need to have a few refuse and food haulers (I use miners/wood cutters for refuse hauling). 

[EvilCheerio]

i've got a single planter on a 9*9 plot of land devided into 9 segments and he keeps 6 other food related guys up to their eyeballs in shit to do, of course i'm not using plump helmets so that hurts it but the ridiculously large stacks of food are worth it.

[Duke 2.0]

 To people saying they have too much food: This will make the too much food come faster, thus freeing up the food production workers for more hauling tasks. Can't have too many haulers.

[DJ_Muffinman]

Jesus how much food do you need?  with 100 dwarf cap I seem to end up only farming 1 season in about 5 by year 4.  I just trade for the rest.  Way I see it though if everone is harvesting then walking to the farm is bigger than the walk to the stockpile, as long as the farm is pretty central you shoulnt have too many problems. I usually use a crew of about 6 brewers/threshers/cooks/food haulers then a few butcher/tanners/food haulers to pick up the slack. Like beorn said if you are getting rotting in your food processing area the problem isnt with travel times its that you need to have a few refuse and food haulers (I use miners/wood cutters for refuse hauling). 

Haha, I'm playing with Neoadept's Zombie Mod, and food shortages became a serious problem considering the only trade civilization other than myself was eaten by the Infected Horde long ago.

[Jurph]

Jesus how much food do you need?

My typical fortress operates as a giant well-defended drive-thru restaurant, with debts payable in wooden swords, metal bars, anvils, or other useful items.  Since food has a fairly high value and a low weight, and does not use up any of my finite resources (like stone or ore) I can sustain this economy nearly indefinitely.  If I have a magma pipe and water, I eventually set up an obsidian farm and convert to a Cracker Barrel model: restaurant plus gift shop.  Pull up yer wagons and get some +obsidian chess sets+ !  Have some *kitten tallow roast* !