The Joy of Farming

Setting up your first farms? Or wondering what you could change? Here are a few suggestions...

Intro

I don't see people make many serious mistakes with farms when they start Banished*. However, there are one or two things that can frustrate people. For example, the Food Limit. This guide addresses those and makes some suggestions about farm size, number of farmers, etc..

*Unlike fishing docks :)

Use a Mild Climate

When you start a new map, Climate can have a significant effect on farm production. For example, if you choose Harsh, your town will often have years where the growing season (aka, warmer weather) is very short. As a result, expect very low farm production many years.

Contrast that with the Mild climate. It gives you optimal farm production most years. So, unless you're trying to complete the Mountain Men achievement or prefer increased difficulty, choose a Mild climate when you want the most consistent farm production you can get.

Make Farms 11x11 with 1 Farmer

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=550217184
A lot of people have tested the best farm size for farmer productivity. The guideline is 120 squares per farm (give or take 10) and assign only one farmer. For example, as per the screenshot above, the 11x11 (121 squares) gets 868* food and the 15x8 (120 squares) gets 840. Both are good results for a single farmer.

One other thing to notice - increasing the number of farmers doesn't make the field more productive. Instead, the harvest happens faster. This can be useful in 2 situations:

• You plant crops that are harvested late in the year (such as pumpkins). You can lose some of your harvest if an early frost happens.** This doesn't necessarily happen often in a mild climate, but if you prefer, you can have 2 farmers to make sure all harvests are completed. (Personally, I don't do this.)
  
• You chose a harsh climate instead of a mild one. In this case, you should consider 2 to prevent loss to frost.

It is true that a larger field, 15x15, produces more total food, but it will not necessarily produce as much food per farmer. For example:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=550217661
With 4 famers, the 15x15 produces slightly less than 400 food per farmer. That means the farmer isn't harvesting enough to feed a family of 5 (the max family size in a Stone House). I prefer to see farmers produce a minimum of 500 food each year (one full house). My goal is to do much better than the minimum.

* All tests were done with educated workers. They will harvest more than uneducated workers will.

** Different crops are affected by frost at different temperatures and some are harvested much earlier in the year than others. For the time being, those topics are beyond the scope of what this guide is trying to accomplish. I may revisit this later.

Set Each Field's Farmer Limit

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=550646410
The game can assign more farmers than you want. Check and set the maximum number of farmers for the size field you have. For example, a farm of 110-130 squares only needs 1 in many situations.

Increase the Game's Total Food Limit

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=550722900
The game's default food limit for all food producers - farmers, fishers, hunters, etc - is 5000. That is not much food when you consider that (1) each citizen needs ~100 food/year to survive and (2) each house stores food only available to people living in that house. I almost always bump this to ~500,000 at the start of a map. If you have reasons for a lower number, that's fine. Just make sure you check your limit if your town starts having hunger problems.

Put Barns and Housing Near Farms

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=547772187
The best situation is to have barns and housing next to each field. The gif above shows how nontrivial the results can be when housing and barns are only 30 squares away.

Related Guides

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=465745880
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=462272783

Updates to this Guide

I'm happy to update the guide based on questions or comments. If you have what you feel is a correction, please provide a screenshot or artwork.

No guarantee when updates will happen... I'll get to them as soon as I have time.

Updates:

• 2015-11-11: Added a section about Climate.

[tlhman7]

Just learning the game, enjoying. I am trying to grow new crops in fields, but can not find how to plant with seeds. I built a trade post, but do not know much about how to use it to buy seeds. I use the tab for purchases, but no seeds are listed. What am I doing wrong?

[SeedLotus]

thanks

[Hernan.]

It's almost harvesting season!

[EnigmaticBird]

Beans are a good early on plant that I'd suggest to have 1 farmer each. They grow, from my expirence(4~ towns 1000+ pop.. achievements sadly broken.), THE quickest and usually are done harvesting early autumn. Squash, Wheat, Corn, and Pumpkins seem to be the slowest for me. I usually give then 2 farmers. Also, setting up houses near the farms is a good idea. You'll ALWAYS have late harvest if they have to walk to their field- don't worry about moving people around. People will automatically take the job that is closest to their household and will frequiently 'switch' jobs with someone else in order to be the closest to their workplace.

If you have diasters enabled, don't !EVER! plant the same type of crop next to each other. That'll cause a famine quickly if a certain event takes place. This can be hard early on, but once you have 4/5~ different seeds it works quite well.

[Arcturus]

From what I can tell, most crops appear to grow and harvest at roughly the same time... and the other benefits of crop rotation (stuff regarding fertility or soil health) appear to be none-existent.

Also the seasons go by too quickly for summer/autumn plants to be planted while spring ones grow. Guess work on my part, but it looks like it might be best to just leave your farmers on their own respective fields.

[t@ngent]

what about benefits of Crop rotation?

[Arcturus]

The trader can come from numerous different towns, and each town supplies him with different materials for trade. One of the tabs at the top of the trading post screen (I think the last one) allows you to order goods so that he'll be guaranteed to have it next time he shows up. You can use this to ensure that he'll arrive with the seeds you need next time.

Keep in mind that seeds are very expensive. I think around 2.5k each? But once you had the seeds, you can use them in any number of farms. This means you'll need to stockpile the trading post with a lot of expensive goods though... and basic materials like logs don't sell for much. I think firewood does though, so keep that in mind.

[Arcturus]

Skrubby, you can cheat using the debug menu (I believe that's a mod?) to add all seeds... of course that's cheating, so I wouldn't be surprised if you said no.


For legitimate gaining of seeds, you need a trading post. The "basic materials" you saw were just things that you currently own. As you gain more materials, they will be added to the list. You can change the number there, and the workers will gather those materials from storage and place it into the post (materials have to be in the post to trade). If the amount in post goes over that limit, the workers will move it to other storage so the town can use it (so bought items are automatically removed, usually).

The trader takes a long while to arrive, to prevent players from relying on him too much. The first time I used the post, it confused me because I didn't know I had to wait for him to arrive first. You'll see him rowing down the river, and you'll get a notification when he arrives at the post.

[Skup]

How do I get seeds, I have a feeling through a trading post, I had one on my easy game (experimental game) and I only saw basic materials and merchants never showed up, so can a gatherer get seeds or maybe a magical seed toter or something along the lines of that?

[Bethgael]

Thankyou for taking the trouble to write this guide (and all of your others). I've found them very helpful. Saved me many frustrated handfuls of hair! :)