Difficulty (hard); Land requirement (large); Versatility (small)
Farmers grow crops in large amount, that much we figure. Growing crops means waiting for them to grow and you will have time to do other things. You might have fun getting your head around the use of fertilizers in order to secure a sustainable source ingredients for the chefs. Your skill makes you a natural helpers of tailors too.
But beware: it’s by far the most difficult job available if you want a nice home and contribute to other fun projects this game offers. Three things make the farming job difficult. The first is the abundance of wild crops early on, which essentially makes farmers useless on most servers. By the time the cooking skill is on and farmers are more useful, many chefs will sacrifice the hunting skill to pick farming and grow their own crops. I guess it's only fair, but sad, since you need two players with complementary skills on medium settings to offer the very best food.
The second difficulty is that farmers, like chefs, have no industry-related advantage. This leaves you to craft basic things independently with less efficiency, attempt fair trade, or convince others to collaborate in ways that are less straightforward and more risky than the basic trade approach. Contracts are not always abundant to make a living and most carpenters, masons, road makers and smelters do not have the skill and/or the interest to hire assistants (in a fair way).
The third difficulty lies in land management. Farmers need a lot of land, but have no specific advantage to unlock research like carpenters, masons and engineers do. Independent research and hidden skill books on competitive worlds make things worse. Your generic research papers are the cheapest and you could contribute to research in exchange for scrolls, but the other players also have this option. Moreover, your farmlands can be in the way of infrastructure projects (ex.: roads) and pollution. In a stalemate with a blast furnace, the little plants loose.
Basically, farming is an interesting profession if you have little time to play and you are looking for a simple job in terms of crafting. Being more active will require a lot more effort and a community with high collaborative skills. In all cases, there are good chances that your main skills will not be useful for several days and you’ll face more difficulties than the average player.
To finish this section on a positive note, farming is by far my favorite profession because it allows me to take pauses, invest a lot of time in government management, support players who struggle and take time to observe servers dynamics, trade patterns, etc. It is also the best profession to cure yourself of real world approaches and innovate on economic and social structures.
You have some time to gather crops before you worry about farmlands output, but it's a good habit to claim your spots. Forests that yield camas bulb, fiddlehead, huckleberry, taro root, mushroom and papaya should be your first target. Grassland are next (rice, beet, tomato). Wet land for cotton and mushrooms can be a good idea too. Lastly, deserts yield preciously cheap prickly pears for later.
Claiming early also communicate your intentions, so no one settle in the middle of your potato field and the road builders can point out you claimed the middle of a future road before it's too late.
Next, learn to build small, because you'll need it. Your first home can stand on 1 land claims if need be. If you build small, you will be able to put a store next to a chef and contribute to a downtown area. Otherwise you may build next to any of your farms.
It’s quite common for farmers to pick gathering first. There is so much wild crops lying around and you can go over 900 crops per 10 minutes of play. You can plan for about 50-100 campfire salad for every active player on day 1. So spending 10 minutes in the wild gets you enough crops to feed 3 active players daily. Of course, this won't last.
Farming is your next option. Next, I have seen experienced farmers pick milling before fertilizers. This was best in situations where chefs did not need a lot of crops, so poor harvests were not a problem. Securing land for wheat and corn as well as getting access to milling items such as huckleberries extract are nice bonus. When you are on servers with only few people involved in the food industry, you may want to share the baking and advanced baking skills with another player too.
Many worlds die before advanced cooking is reached and some chefs don't bother with baking. In these cases, it is best to avoid milling and pick other skill along the way. Hunting keeps you in the food business, so maybe it's time to diversify by picking mining or logging. Otherwise, any crafting skill could do if you have a specific project in mind. In fact farming/tailoring is a good combination if you already work closely with a butcher and your local carpenters are decent players. However, carpenters tend to pick it before you since they have more opportunities to get a better XP bonus and they provide the wood easily. I usually go for mining and try to help the least paranoid smelter around.
Picking campfire cooking first is tempting for farmers since gathering doesn't bring that much of an advantage at first. It is also a way to offer the very best diet at day 1 if you work with a hunter which will get tallow and fish very fast. On day 2, you may begin your vegetable path, he continues to work on meat and you can split the chef skills along the way. Also, when a chef has upgrade modules, the demand for crops is small and farmers can interpret this as if the chef stopped working with them. So they pick campfire cooking too, hoping to do better.
You will find here few ideas about your role at each era. Of course, Eco is a simulation and a sandbox game, so I encourage you to experiment other paths.
Since there is food everywhere, your role is to gather crops. Just don't overdue it since many chefs get their own ingredients at this point. You will be expected to stockpile for seeds, however, and prepare land for farming. Claiming small lands in several key biomes is a valid approach and you’ll be able to stock on various crops at each biome. Whenever possible, try to reach for chefs and learn to work with them, perhaps helping to build their store in exchange for quality food and/or the addition of their work on your campfire.
Once food is available and you have good reserves, you have free time. Finding a way to assist other specialists (with a fair compensation of course) can set an example for new players, work you up the collaboration tree and is more efficient than working alone.
You might want to sell a chest full of plant fibers to help tailors and carpenters. Your farming skills allow you to build a unique piece of furniture (salt basket) and your fertilizer skill allow you to build the sampling tool. Carpenters are likely to look for it in order to monitor their forests. On rare occasions, players might look at your store for seeds to use in clay pots. Of course, there might be money to make with cotton.
You need to continue to store crops for basic salads and medley as well as making sure your lands will supply any other type of crops needed by chefs. This tasks requires planning over several days, so be careful. Again, try to collaborate closely with others, especially those from the food industry. The milling skill is useful for food, but you can also use it to make fuel for lamps. Just know that players with such needs are rare.
There might be some governmental work to do when zoning is available in order to protect farmlands from urban expansion, but it's rare. One particular law to check is the one that prevents players from dropping items on the ground. You need to drop seeds to make compost for fertilizers, so make sure the law is made accordingly. Drop things unless it's on your land will works, but severely limit your ability to make compost since your lands should already be full of growing things. Lobby for a skill limited ability or a compost district instead.
More of the same as farmers continue to supply crops. This role will require planning and careful monitoring of soil nutriments. Look out for new sources of pollution. Also, water treatment facilities will produce compost and your community expect you to get rid of it (yay, no more compost fields).
Prepare for a drastic drop in demand for calories when skid steer and better tools continue to appear. Your main role towards the end is to keep showing on the server. Finds original ways to engage and keep the game fun.
Crops availability and changes in cooking recipes can easily cause food shortage and unavailability of good diets. Farmer’s exchange are early bartering stores that both buy and sell crops, meat products and fully cooked meals at the same price. This neutral place made wonders on some servers and nothing on others, however.
Most players early on will gather crops themselves. They will end up with seeds that are eaten or sometimes dropped on the ground. A granary look to your store downtown can be a nice landmark. Some players feel they contribute more to the community if they give you spare seeds and you can use them for early farmlands and research.
There are many good reasons to make a downtown area. Farmers can make themselves available and contribute to downtown creation by claiming a small patch of land downtown. Try to settle somewhere flat and close to desert, mountains, jungle and a good source of food. You can easily invite people to settle next to you since you will only expand elsewhere on the map, far from pollution.
A lot of projects require players to dig and level the ground. This doesn’t require specific skills so farmers can easily add their time to such projects. As a bonus, you may get back home with useful pile of dirt for fertilizers.
This is more like an opinion, than observation, but don’t ruin yourself with tractors right away. These machines require considerably large and flat farmlands to really make a difference and your meager revenues might be best spent elsewhere.
If compost accumulates in large amount, you may offer engineers and smelter to get rid of it in exchange for borrowing their skid steer for a while. Use the machine to get dirt for fertilizers or stones that you can sell. I just mean here that sometimes blunt money is not the best thing you can get for your services.
Chefs have very high needs at specific times during the game and you are co-dependent as members of the food business. Help them in making cooking-related research and the room for the first oven. The faster they are set, the faster you can put your farming skills to use.
Some players will have excess dirt and clay when digging basements and leveling ground. Usually people are happy to get rid of it. You can use it to speed up preparation of large flat farmlands, make a multi-level farm and fertilizers. Clay can be turned to bricks with a bit of work from your local mason.
Road building usually yield excess amount of dirt, so you should join the effort and learn to work with engineers and masons on road contracts. Bring back dirt for storage and enjoy a friendship that will make the game more fun and may give you access to the industrial effort later.
You might not have the chance to get as much land papers as others or the best farming spots may be small. Consider building another level on top of your farm. This can be done by placing hewn logs few blocks above your actual farmland and covering it with dirt. You can then remove the hewn logs or leave them there, depending on your wealth and will to make realistic designs.
Some players have extra papers and you can convince them to claim lands suited for farming and grant you access. Use this trick on tailors for their cotton fields and negotiate long term maintenance of soil nutrients and regular harvest.
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