As I said on the comments of the poll, the whole "not updating things too far away" seems silly, at least for farms and sprouts. Updating everything real-time would be very resource-heavy, sure, but keeping track of the time elapsed since the player left the area and then updating when the player re-enter it wouldn't probably be THAT difficult. With a bit of creativeness, you could even do it for fire or water displacement, or monster birth / death. Then again you could always have a way to select the number of "region" to be updated real-time, accordingly to your computer's specs.
But as I think of it, he mentioned several interesting ideas : the concept of procedurally generated NPC towns would be awesome. Just imagine a couple of basic wooden buildings (that's already ingame with the "Spawn hut"), with a wall around and maybe some farm tiles in the vicinity, and some "Villager" NPCs who roam around and "Guard" NPCs who attack you if you destroy a block of the city or kill a villager. Then some buildings could have chests with riches and useful materials inside, effectively making it possible to raid towns, plunder the coffers and burn the city after killing everyone who crossed your path. And then to proceed to the next town. Awesome !