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[L0master]

I always try to keep some distance between farm plots like trails, just using common sense, and perhaps that looks more neat for me.
But is there a practical reason of doing so? Do crops get trampled if walked upon?
As the fortress grows the lack of free space becomes a concern. So are there any drawbacks of building farm plots adjacent to each other?

How do your farmlands usually look?
My farmlands always look like this:
 
(inbefore: "I can't understand anything in this tileset abomination")

[The Scout]

They won't get trampled. Otherwise the planters will kill all your plants.

[CapnUrist]

I've never seen farm plants trampled, so I don't think that's an issue.

Tree farms, however, I could see the benefit of dedicated paths.

[Illanair]

Yeah, making high traffic areas and making floors pathing through a treefarm would probably be a good idea - don't forget to put all of the trees as restricted? traffic areas - they will only enter those areas when you force them to by designating something to be chopped down.

[twilightdusk]

High traffic areas cost 1 point of movement in the pathing algorithms (default is cost 2). Restricted areas count as cost 25. If you label tree saplings as restricted, and have the surrounding area be high traffic, nobody should trample the growing trees.

[Tai_MT]

My underground farms are directly next to each other in 4x4 plots.  A 2x6 setting of fields that are 4x4 a piece, with no paths between them.  It saves space underground, and it saves me the issue of having to dig larger holes above them in order to drop water on their squares so I can get the plots.

Above ground...

Well, I space them out a bit more.  But, I put seed stockpiles between them.

I've noticed no penalty for proximity of fields to each other.  So, if you want to save space, put them right next to each other.  If you want them to look like actual fields...  Separate them some.

Aestetics are your friend with farming.

Well, that, and proximity to stockpiles for input and output on your fields.

[Hyndis]

Plants on a farm field cannot be trampled. You don't need to spread them out. I do but only for aesthetics reasons. There is no practical reason, and it is in fact much more efficient to build a few ginormous farm plots, such as 10x10 farm plots next to each other.

[Nameless Archon]

High traffic areas cost 1 point of movement in the pathing algorithms (default is cost 2). Restricted areas count as cost 25. If you label tree saplings as restricted, and have the surrounding area be high traffic, nobody should trample the growing trees.

Marking the sapling is sufficient, and surrounding it with high-traffic can be undesirable. In the second (surrounded by high-traffic) case, people will detour INTO the high-traffic area if they're passing by, as it's "cheaper" than normal. If this area has traffic, it has the potential to draw dwarves in and then force them to path around one another.

Best just to mark the saplings as restricted.

The only cases where a dwarf will walk on a single restricted tile are if the job is actually on it (like a farm plot), or there's no way to reach the other side without going more than 25 tiles around (it's blocking the tunnel and the detour is too long).

[Hans Lemurson]

In one of my tree-farms, I marked-out a grid of "high-traffic" paths that would allow my dwarves to walk where they needed.  I got tired of them always taking the "most direct path" and ever since setting this path, I have had no problems with heedless trampling.

As for the OP's question: I'm fairly sure that armies can march across farm-fields without any ill effect, so paths would only have aesthetic purposes.

[sir_laser]

For your tree farms, if you don't assign traffic paths then your dwarves will trample the saplings.

For your farm plots, there's no DF objective need, although it might be nice for your own personal taste in aesthetics.

[twilightdusk]

And to an extent, aesthetics are part of what makes DF what it is. It's the reason some people like to use graphics packs, its the reason why we all like to use overly complicated methods to do things with a simple solution, and it's the reason different people like to work with different terrains.

[Jurph]

Separating your farm fields into (e.g.) four 5x5 plots inside an 11x11 farm zone has some interesting side benefits:

• You can use the intervening alley closest to the door for a plant stockpile, typed to allow different crops, with each harvest stockpile set to push its crops to stockpiles centered on different industries - this means harvesters will make many short trips and complete the harvest quickly.  Haulers can perform the relocation tasks in parallel.
• Alleys between fields but far from the main door can hold 2x1 or 3x1 stockpiles of seeds - this means planters will make short trips (again, haulers will bring fresh seeds back from the industry zones).
• Four 5x5 fields is exactly 100 tiles of growing area; since 200 seeds is the max, this lets you grow 100 tiles of a crop while keeping a 100-seed reserve for either the following season or another emergency.
• 11x11 happens to be the size of a SHIFT+ARROW+ARROW designation, allowing for quick designation.
• An 11x11 farm zone also lets you place three rooms, 3 tiles wide, on each other edge.  These 3-tile-wide rooms can be used for planters' bedrooms/burrows very efficiently.
• It looks nice.

[martinuzz]

As for treefarms, I don't use paths. I just divide the treefarm into a few (huge) rooms, each with their own access doors, and rotate harvesting those when I think they've grown a dense enough forest, while keeping the other rooms locked.

[L0master]

since 200 seeds is the max, this lets you grow 100 tiles of a crop while keeping a 100-seed reserve for either the following season or another emergency.[/li][/list]

I haven't heard about any seeds limits. You mean i can only farm 200 seeds at the same moment and no more?

[sir_laser]

Any seeds over 200 are either discarded or not accounted for, apparently. I've a fortress going on for ~six years, and my plump helmet and wild strawberry seed count is stuck at 200 whenever I bother to go look at the kitchen.