Food death spiral

[Johnny 5]

I am trying to play as Sicily (I prefer mid tier starts)

It seems borked, if you stay in napoli market after a few years then just hit a massive deficit of food, if you create your own market you are spending all your cash on food and your pops are still starving...gonna try one more time as Tunis.

I feel like the Devs and influencers haven't played as mid nations

[Noname]

Yeah, I had the same experience. After 20 years I ended up in a state where all my expenses were set to 0 because my country needed so much food that it was impossible to pay for anything else, and food cost more than my income anyway, so food death spiral turned into a debt spiral very fast after that.