Food, by the numbers

Overview

Let's take a closer, more analytical approach to understanding how to feed those Villagers!

This is a strategy article that pulls together data from many other articles, augmenting that with actual gameplay measurements, to provide guidance on how effective the various food sources can be. You can then use this knowledge to develop your own strategy with respect to what food sources you will use at the various stages of your settlement's life.

This article does not tell you how to produce any food, only how effective each food source is.

The actually gameplay measurements used in this article were gathered from a v0.9.0a Pioneer difficulty, Idyllic Valley map world, and should be considered best case scenario.

Basic concepts

Related article: Food security, variety, and reliability

Related article: Farming

Related article: Spoilage

Related article: Maladies

Related article: Items Data

It takes 24 food items to feed a single Villager each year. That food needs to be varied to avoid various Maladies. Some food is seasonal, i.e. can only be obtained in certain months of the year. The villagers should really be provided with food throughout the year, so seasonality matters but can be mitigated to varying degrees by smoking, preserving and upgrading storage (and even when you schedule the harvesting of Crops).

You cannot directly control which food villagers eat, i.e. they will consume foods in a random order despite its shelf-life refusing to prioritize eating those foods that spoil sooner first.

This article does not discuss buying food from Traveling Merchants, which is an additional option that becomes available to you once you build a Trading Post and accrue Gold. It is conceivable that a Settlement need not produce its own food at all (only buying food) once you have reached this point in the game.

Hunters

Initially:

Deer: 56 meat, 1 pelt, 1, tallow

Upgraded (Hunter Lodge) additionally:

Small game: 24 meat, 1 pelt

Boar: 280 meat, 3 pelt, 4 tallow

Maximum meat per year??? Seen so far: 384

Foragers

Annual maximums seen from a single shack.

Mushrooms: 40
Nuts: 33
Eggs: 31
Berries: 64
TOTAL: 168

Fishing

This section pending.

Barns

A Large Barn (an upgraded Barn) with herd 99% healthy, fodder quality of 84% (and food stores of 872/480) and 20/20 Cows and all 12 workers (with 60% travel time) all fenced in, annually yields:

Meat: 1020 (courtesy of the three cows born per year that facilitate three getting slaughtered)
Pelts: 9 (from three slaughtered cows)
Tallow: 12 (from three slaughtered cows)
Milk: 899

Remember that it takes one milk to make one Cheese.

Cooked foods

Need meat and fish, but also firewood.

Annual maximum logs produced by a Forester Camp set to 5/0/1, mature only, with six workers and 60% travel time: 256

Remember, one logs produces 20 firewood.

Arborist

Two workers, 35% travel time, "very good" fertility, >20 years old, all fenced in, 24 peach trees, 11 pear, 11 apple: 448/year

The annual yield is tricky to capture because there are multiple harvests per year and fruit is consumed in parallel with harvests. The number could be much higher. Furthermore, the Annual Report shows twice as much fruit consumed as produced, i.e. 1000 vs. 500!

Crops

Given a 12×12 Crop Field with 100% fertility, 1% weed level, 0% rockiness and neutral soil mixture:

Crop	Fertility	Weed level	Rockiness	Soil bonus (%)¹	Yield total (nominal²)	Yield/square
Beans	+135	+99	+104	+135 (+10%)	1688 (1215)	12
Cabbage	+177	+177	+177	n/a (+0%)	2519 (1988)	17
Turnip	+68	+67	+68	n/a (+0%)	1013 (810)	7
Wheat	+238	+234	+203	+238 (+10%)	3208 (2295)	22
Flax³	+210	+177	+178	n/a (+0%)	2837 (2272)	20

¹ The soil bonus percentage is that shown with respect to the soil mixture in the crop field dialog.
² The nominal yield is the default, without any bonuses or penalties.
³ Different (but very similar) nearby field: 12×12, 98% fertility, 0% weed level, 0% rockiness, neutral soil mixture. Flax was included in the above table (despite not being a food) simply because the data was available.

How many villagers can you feed?

Villagers per food source

Taking all of the metrics in the previous sections, this is how many villagers you can feed with a single food source:

Food source	VFPY¹	Notes
1×Hunter	16	ASP²
1×Forager	7	ASP
1×Fisher	?	ASP
1×Barn	?
1×Large Barn	80	Both meat and cheese (so needs Cheesemaker) but no smoking required(?)
1×Arborist Building	18.7	ASP
Beans	12.2	5×5 field
Beans	70.3	12×12 field
Cabbage	18.2	5×5 field but spoils in less than 12 months
Cabbage	105	12×12 field but requires creative harvesting schedules* to mitigate spoiling*
Turnip	7.3	5×5 field but spoils in less than 12 months
Turnip	42.2	12×12 field but requires creative harvesting schedules* to mitigate spoiling*
Wheat	23.2	5×5 field requires Bakery to produce the Bread the villagers would actually be able to eat
Wheat	133.7	12×12 field

¹ Villagers Fed Per Year
² Assume Steady Production throughout the year so nothing spoils.

A crop field cannot be created smaller than 5×5 nor larger than 12×12, but can be created any size you like between those (as long as neither dimension is less than five or greater than 12) and can be extended indefinitely (as long as it's contiguous). You can also create as many different (or identical) crop fields as you want.

Feeding 132 villagers

So, in summary, to feed 132 villagers:

Food source	ETWF¹
Hunter	8.4
Forager	19.1
Fisher	?
Barn	?
Large Barn	1.7
Arborist Building	7.2
Beans	1.9
Cabbage	1.3
Turnip	3.2
Wheat	1

¹ Equivalent To Wheat Field, i.e. how many to be equivalent to a 12×12 wheat field used to make bread.