how do you manage food production?

[Anec]

The hardest thing in this game is food production, like how do you manage it when you need upwards of 30? right now living off farms with carrots but I spend like 70% of moon time on managing food every run and i get to play nothing

[Sir_Rob_DSM]

2 animal pen + 10 chickens + 2stove = eggs / ommelets,
this is how im doing with 20 food need on forest on beach im dieing 2much

[Delfar]

Don't know I am producting over 100 only needing 24. I use eggs to do omelette in the stove, using apple and berry for fruit salad and milk and berry for milkshake.

[Delfar]

I begin to do the same without animal pen and it was hell... Now I have 5 animal pen with some cows but mostly chickens.

[llutac]

I have 14 villagers, they need 28 food per moon.
For production I use 12 Greenhouses with carrots -> carrot magnet -> crane -> hotpot
That is a pretty hands-off setup, the only thing to do is sell the surplus every so often. Granted, you need glass from the island to get greenhouses. So the eggs into stoves making omelettes route might be viable earlier.

[MrDropps]

Once i get past the mid game and start doing my boss hunting. I have all resource production moved over to dogs. So all together 5 dogs and currently 12 humans starts to expand a bit but not much. I have 2 potatoe farms, 5 chickens, then i have crans unloading the potatoe and egg into a stove and i get frittata and omelets out of it. Then i have 2 farms left running carrots but at this point their hotpot is full so i'm just selling them. Eggs and potatoes are great and even just eggs will get you enough and you can always breed more chickens as you expand. Milk will also supplement for free.

get greenhouses, magnets and cranes to automate the food.

[hogany]

Just spam chickens untill you got 3-4 full animal pens. Place pens next to your kitchens so eggs will automatically jump in.

[AJ Vulpes]

it was pretty difficult for me at first, but i have 6 farms making carrots, onions and potatoes and have a breeding pen for cows and chickens. once i get too many, i place them in a couple of butcheries. get plenty of meat, milk and eggs and you can make a lot of stew which has the added benefit of increasing the villager work speed.

was working off fruit salad for quite a while before i got stew production going

[YKCBBSS]

better to use animals

[Jun Misugi]

1-found apple
2-farm apple
3-find plains card from explorers pack
4-find 5 soil from explorers pack
5-farm 5 apple
6-get 5 apple tree
7-get axe and give it villager
8-chop down apple trees
9-do 5 6 again
10-easy apple farm

[M]

Food could be in issue in the beginning, if you have bad luck with the card packs, but past a certain level it should be easy:
In the early game you can rely on apples and farms to continuously produce apples. Downside is it needs manual management and villagers to harvest apples.
Later you want food production without (much) manual actions and without occupying villagers. Easiest setup is probably greenhouses with carrots. Four greenhouses with carrots supplying a mess hall is already a good source of food. Animal pen(s) with chicken with stove(s) supplying a mess hall is also good, produces lots of omelets. or just cows and milk.
Whats also nice is fritatas, but its made from two components, so it requires some manual action. But it is easy to have chicken producing more eggs than your stove can handle, with a greenhouse producing potatos, you can occasionaly drag a stack of potatos and a stack of eggs to your stove for fritata mass production.
If you play on the island (which I prefer, as if all goes wrong you still can continue from the mainland), it is a bit different: In the beginning, you have bananas instead of apples. In the beginning, monkeys provide a good work force and require only one banana each round and don't die if you don't give it to them, Mid game on the island, grilled fish is a good food. With a fish trap, a lime greenhouse and a stove, you'll likely produce more grilled fish than you need, but the fish must be killed manually. On the island, there are no cows or chicken, but for later automated food production, greenhouses with carotts works as well. A pen full of parrots provides lots of berries to (and is a good idea anyways to convert pirates).
Rotting food is not an issue, if it happens you produce more food than you need anyways. If you want to have some food storage for safety anyways, have some aquarium with tuna.

[Justin]

The easiest way to manage food late game is by using greenhouses and any multi-point single item foods (i.e. carrots). This prevents the need for complicated automation chains and is easily scalable.

When combined with a magnet and crane that puts it into a hotpot, it is fully automated and does not take much space on the board.

Here[imgbb.com] is my end game board as an example (top left).

[Princess]

Originally posted by Sir_Rob_DSM:

2 animal pen + 10 chickens + 2stove = eggs / ommelets,
this is how im doing with 20 food need on forest on beach im dieing 2much

I'm doing the same thing with a nearly 30 food need, on the island I have 2 fishermen killing fish > take half of fish and place them on the three fish traps > cooking the rest > hotpot

[slindenau]

Originally posted by Delfar:

Don't know I am producting over 100 only needing 24. I use eggs to do omelette in the stove, using apple and berry for fruit salad and milk and berry for milkshake.

Just to make sure you're not wasting time; fruit salad and milkshake don't actually improve the net amount of food, just the monetary value (if you would want to sell excess on the market).

[Xuhybrid]

On the mainland i went with chickens. I have 4 animal pens and stoves and a resource magnet for Omelette. It's all automated except for storage into the Hotpot.

On the island i went for fish traps and lime greenhouses (Tuna gives 3 fish) for a while but it got a little annoying killing fish so i used parrots and limes to compost a bunch of soil for nice and simple Carrot greenhouses.

[Lanosa]

I have 2 pens full of chickens and a 3rd one full of cows, and I'm using 2 stoves making omelettes. I have 2 farms dedicated on carrots, and I'm building the ingredients required for stew and sacrifice cows to make them. Also I have a berry farm to mix them with milk. With all that, I have more food than what I really need with 12 people.